Introduction: Careful thinking about our existential situation reveals the following initial convictions: 1) Good evidence for metaphysical beliefs (e.g. the existence and nature of God) need not consist of a deductive, absolute proof, but sufficient evidence to satisfy a rational person; 2) An argument for a comprehensive life philosophy should be a cumulative case, i.e. it should consist of evidence from all areas of human life and experience; 3) Metaphysical propositions are not �guilty until proven innocent�; no special burden of proof lies on the religious believer, since atheists are committed to equally risky worldviews; and 4) Evidence for living problems cannot be mechanically interpreted by experts, but must be interpreted by every individual with sensitivity, since each of us is responsible for the consequences of our beliefs (Evans 53).

Part A: There are a number of Actualities which we are sure of because we cannot consistently deny them as we live out our lives (e.g. knowledge of the true, good, and beautiful, freedom, human individuation from animals). This is the best starting point because it utilizes common ground which every person can agree to (I will defend that in the paper) and because it insures that by starting with those actualities we cannot consistently deny as we live our lives, we will not reach any conclusions which are less certain than our premises. This second point insures that our argument is significant, i.e. that the argument is thoroughly grounded in the real world and that one cannot lightly reject our conclusions with a G.E. Moore shift. These Actualities require a personal God and a strong distinction between humans and animals as preconditions of possibility.

Part B: On all the issues which are inescapable, on which we must decide, we can trace out living consequences of the very few basic answers or systems which are logically possible, then eliminate the ones which don�t work (since not working is a sign of falsehood) and establish by process of elimination what is true, which since we must wager, we can now do gladly. Looking collectively at every problem, Christian theism consistently gives the true solution. Therefore, we advance from generic theism to Christianity. While particular actualities or solutions of individual problems may be contested, the structure and logic of the system are (as far as I can tell) unassailable.

Our purpose here is to find truth. We are dead serious. This is no philosophical or academic game. Transcendental Pragmatism is a philosophy for life, just as all philosophy should be. With Wittgenstein, we say, �...what is the use of studying philosophy if it does not improve your thinking about the important questions of everyday life?� Thus, this book should not be read with callused indifference and detachment as if reading about metabolic pathways in plants. Rather, introspection and reflection on one�s experiences in life are constantly required, just as much as a careful following of the movements of my argument.

We exist and find ourselves in a world that exists, yet is shrouded in mystery. The fact of existence, as opposed to non-existence, is as Sartre writes, the central philosophical problem�or we might just say, it is the central riddle of life. In seeking answers to the riddles of existence, I will follow a combination of the Pragmatic and the Kantian method which I designate �Transcendental Pragmatism.� Pragmatists believe �that apparent objective truth is not the whole matter; that there is an authoritative need to believe the things that are necessary to the human mind� (Chesterton, Orthodoxy 36). The key word here is necessary. We learn from necessity what unaided discursive reason and empiricism cannot tell us. My method uses a Kantian �transcendental� version of the Pragmatist approach. Kant noticed that we have objective knowledge of natural science, arithmetic, and geometry even though there is nothing necessary about any synthetic matters of fact derived from experience, since experience could always have been different and may yet turn out differently in areas not yet explored. His quandary was that it seemed he had no basis for objective knowledge, yet he knew he had objective knowledge. Something was obviously wrong. He therefore developed a new philosophical method which combines the strengths of discursive reason (rationalism) and empiricism. Instead of starting with indubitable ideas or sense data, Kant started with his actual knowledge, what is given (if not demonstrably necessary and universal empirically) in experience, and argues from the actual to the necessary and sufficient conditions of possibility of that actuality. Kant�s particular conclusions need not concern us here, for Kant�s method rather than his conclusions are important to my argument about the nature of life.

My purpose in using Kant�s transcendental framework to revise the pragmatists� method is to achieve the necessity and universality which the Pragmatists significantly lost. Pragmatism, according to William James, is �first, a method; and second, a genetic theory of what is meant by truth� (Pragmatism 33). What I take from the Pragmatists is a revised version of their method; I completely reject their genetic theory of truth, for reasons which will become apparent in the course of the inquiry.

My approach is akin to the common sense philosophy of Thomas Reid and the G.E. Moore shift in logic. After several hundred years of the Enlightenment project of objective knowledge built on indubitable principles of pure reason launched by Descartes, Moore (an associate of Bertrand Russell) presented a paper called �A Defense of Common Sense� (1925). The audience, well versed in the problems of Cartesian epistemology, wondered how he could possibly prove the existence of the external world, known only by the senses, which Descartes believed should be doubted since they do not always give accurate information. Moore argued, How do we know the external world exists? Well, he said, here is an object . . . there is another . . . and another. The point is that any theory of knowledge that doesn�t explain the knowledge we do have�which in fact calls into question our actual knowledge�is a pretty lousy theory of knowledge. Reid and Moore reasoned that their knowledge of the external world was more certain than the premises on which Descartes� epistemology was based; therefore they rejected his epistemology rather than the external world. If there was anything they knew, it was that an external world exists! This move is fully logical and rational. If they knew anything, they knew that. In this case, we would argue, �We have actual knowledge of sense objects which can be considered properly basic. Any satisfactory epistemology must explain the preconditions of possibility that make such knowledge possible.�

In discussing method, we are inquiring into what is the best epistemology for us to follow. History provides us�as it so often does�with crucial insights into failures we do not want to repeat�in this case, epistemological dead ends. As just noted, the Enlightenment project sought to ground all knowledge objectively on indubitable principles. The group that followed Descartes� vision of establishing a firm foundation on self-evident, clear and distinct reason, were the rationalists. The group that followed Locke�s vision of establishing a firm foundation on empirical observation were the empiricists. The two strands are, of course, much older: Plato, for example was a rationalist, and Aristotle an empiricist. In the course of time, the Enlightenment project in both forms ran into intractable problems. Objective knowledge, it was realized, was an impossible goal. More importantly, there was no indubitable foundation to be found. Once Descartes doubted his senses, there was no way to logically overcome his skepticism. One could, of course, argue, as Moore finally did in the early twentieth century, that it would be common sense to accept one�s senses as reliable, but still that would not give Descartes the certainty he required. Descartes� purportedly indubitable starting point was his cogito ergo sum. It didn�t take long, though, before philosophers called into question not only the system he deduced from the cogito, but even the enduring self implicit in the cogito: who was this �I� Descartes assumed? They reasoned, couldn�t an evil demon create a series of selves, each with the memory of the previous self, none of which persisted long enough to say the cogito? If this seems absurd, it is. Again, any epistemology which will not provide for actual knowledge is inadequate.

Empiricism led to logical positivism, which assigned all non-empirical truth claims to the trash bin of non-sense, only to fall under its own weight: its very methodological premise could not satisfy the empirical requirement of that premise. Moreover, a purely empirical theory, excluding all metaphysics, was hopelessly reductionist. The positivists died the death of all empiricists: out of the flux of sense experience, only flux can come. There is never any necessity or universality in any inductive arguments, the type empiricism utilizes.

The Enlightenment received its critique in Post-modernism. According to Post-modernism, the objective truth sought by Modernists like Descartes was a hopeless an impossible illusion. Instead, they affirmed radical subjectivism: there is no objective truth; all is interpretation subject to cultural, social, psychological, and biochemical conditioning; truth does not exist. It is easy to see the nihilistic outcome of such an anti-epistemology in the art, music, literature, movies, and television programs of our society. As we rejected the Enlightenment epistemology because it simply did not work and could not account for knowledge we actually possessed, Post-modern epistemology too must be rejected because it too cannot account for knowledge we have.

Why did the Enlightenment fail? Its criterion for knowledge was simply too high; it was impossibly high. Modern philosophy was not satisfied knowing anything, or having a probable argument for something, but demanded that we know that we know what we know. Now, if we need to know that we know, don�t we need to know that we know that we know? An infinite regress begins. On the other hand, Post-modernism supposes that objective knowledge cannot exist in principle because all knowledge and reasoning involves an existing subject who is influenced by non-rational factors such as background, emotions, and environment. It seems Post-modernism has radicalized its case unnecessarily, denying any possible middle ground between Modernism and its own absolute repudiation of Modernism. It seems to consider itself the first and only possible Enlightenment critique, ignoring such figures as Thomas Reid, a contemporary of Hume who had already offered a common sense philosophical alternative. Post-modernism confuses the method of knowledge with the object of knowledge; it makes the mistake of asserting that no objectivity exists just because all possible methods of knowledge are subjective. For example, if one person says the world is flat and another that it is round, it is clear that both persons are expressing epistemologically subjective viewpoints, but that in no way means that there is no objective world or no really flat or really round world ontologically. Post-modernism makes the fatal assumption that subjectivity in thought requires relativism, an assumption resting on the dubious presupposition that there is in an antithesis between exhaustive perfect knowledge and no knowledge at all. Here is an analogy: a modernist umpire says �I call them as they are,� arrogantly claiming a certainty he cannot possibly have, while the post-modernist says, �They aint nothing till I call them,� foolishly embracing an anti-realist view (there exists no reality outside minds) simply because he is an existing subject. There is a reasonable middle way which says, �I call them as I see them� (The Challenge of Postmodernism, 262).

Our desire for absolute certainty is misguided, but we need not therefore fall into the despair of relativism. We can make a good argument and decide what we will reasonably believe on the basis of probability. We can make the case easier as we go along by eliminating those possible answers which do not have the necessary and sufficient conditions of possibility for the actualities we observe. Finally, we need to survey the totality of life experience for the view which best explains the most comprehensive possible spectrum of data. Thus, the transcendental pragmatist method will be incorporated into a broader cumulative case.

Why do we need to even bother with trying to figure out what philosophy, religion, or system best explains reality? We need to do so for two reasons: 1) because we have no choice, and 2) because we often find ourselves in despair and need answers. I will not try to defend the second, for if you are reading this, you probably already appreciate it. The lack of choice about philosophical questions is sufficient to demonstrate that everyone should undertake this investigation, even if he does not feel despair; I will defend this claim. For example, every day we are faced with the question, What should I do? At thoughtful moments, we are confronted with the question, Why am I here? What is the purpose of my life? If I�m just going to do anyway, why bother doing anything? Passing on a legacy of some sort to a doomed race is not much of a reassuring answer. Is everything I do futile and meaningless? These questions are inescapable, though they are flee-able. In other words, you can run from them, but ultimately they will seek you out and you ultimately cannot escape them. You can ignore them, but you cannot shut your ears completely to their cries. Both questions are easily avoided by placing oneself in distracting situations in which one can avoid thinking as much as possible. Television is a particularly useful tool for this distraction in today�s world (but it is by no means the only one!).

Most Westerners today would probably consider themselves agnostic or atheist. The atheist has a peculiar notion that his position is the default position, i.e. he believes that the burden of proof lies on the theist and that, in absence of conclusive proof, atheism is the reasonable position. However, this view seems to overlook the fact that atheism makes positive claims which entail significant risks. Pascal�s Wager brings this out very clearly. Pascal argues that if God does not exist, the theist and atheist have neither gained nor lost much. However, if God does exist, the theist gains everything and the atheist loses everything. The burden of proof rests on the atheist as well as the theist for both of them make positive claims which entail risk.

Realizing this, many hold forth agnosticism as legitimate neutral, middle ground, such that agnosticism is the default position. However, this view, too, fails to appreciate the situation rightly. It fails to grasp the existential force of the human situation. Pascal�s Wager reminds the agnostic of the extreme consequences resting on the decision about God. Agnosticism cannot be a permanent state of belief. It is by nature temporary undecidedness about those questions for which actual human life demands a decision. There are really two kinds of agnostics. First, some agnostics are honest inquirers into the question of God; they have suspended their beliefs. Inasmuch as life demands that they act on beliefs about which they have not yet decided, they try to moderate their actions between the two possibilities of theism and atheism. They give equal emphasis in their actions to the two possibilities. This type of agnostic recognizes that permanent indecision about God is in itself a decision�the decision not to decide, which is precisely tantamount, in nature and in consequence, with the decision against God. The second type of agnosticism, which includes most agnostics, is really a thinly-veiled atheism or Post-Modernism, belief that it is impossible to know anything, a view which does not win by default. As proof of this, look at the lives of most self-identified agnostics. They do not go to religious services in case atheism is false. They do not weigh their life decisions about money, education, sex, relationships, and jobs between atheism and theism. In practice, most self-labeled �agnostics� live as atheists; their lives are based on the mistaken notion that atheism wins by default. Pascal�s Wager should be adequate to awaken them from their dogmatic slumbers.

Plato, in Phaedo (85b), wrote that one must �take the best and most irrefragible of human theories, and let this be the raft upon which he sails through life�not without risk, as I admit, if he cannot find some sure word of God which will more surely and safely carry him.� Of course even to find a sure word of God is impossible if by sure we mean �indubitable� or �certain,� though it is conceivable that the sure word of God may be somehow self-authenticating or that God gives certainty as a gift of sorts. At any rate, as we begin our investigation, we note that we take a risk that the worldview we choose to accept may be wrong, may be disproven by further evidence, and that we will be in error. The best we can do is wager, with all the vagaries of wagering. The agnostic who waits for certain evidence of any theory will be left waiting forever. The wise man, like Plato, chooses as best he can among theories human and purportedly divine, then casts himself on the best and most irrefutable one and makes this his raft for the journey of life. Pascal writes, �you must wager.�

The pragmatist philosopher William James wrote a very significant essay called the �Will to Believe,� which is quite helpful in clarifying the issue of what we are doing in looking for a coherent worldview. As we have done earlier, James repudiates agnosticism as a safe haven for the existing individual. Because James� essay is so eloquent and relevant, I will quote large portions in an effort to show that positive belief in the face of no coercive evidence is not immoral or weak, but rather moral and brave. The agnostic, too, is making a decision based on the lack of coercive evidence, but his decision, i.e. the decision not to look into the matter and then decide, is arguably the wimpiest option of all. The agnostic has not escaped making a decision, but only succeeded in making the least-informed one.

James� thesis is that each individual has the right to �indulge his personal faith at his personal risk� and to �adopt a believing attitude in religious matters, in spite of the fact that our merely logical intellect may not have been coerced� (1-2). James begins with the observation that academic audiences, fed solely on science, are paralyzed in their native capacity for faith. This is a special form of mental weakness which has been �brought about by the notion, carefully instilled, that there is something called scientific evidence by waiting upon which they shall escape all danger of shipwreck in regard to truth.� However, this notion is worthless in the great major of existential decisions in our lives. James continues,

James next defines some terms. A hypothesis is �anything which may be proposed to our belief�; an option, a �decision between two hypotheses�; a live (verses dead) option, a decision in which the individual thinker is willing to act irrevocably on both hypotheses; a forced (verses avoidable) option, a dilemma based on a �complete logical disjunction, with no possibility of not choosing or of remaining indifferent�; a momentous (verses a trivial) option, a decision involving a unique opportunity or significant stake, or which would be irreversible if it later proves unwise; and a genuine option, a decision which is live, forced, and momentous. James cites Pascal�s Wager as a demonstration that the God hypothesis is a genuine option. James then quotes the positivist Clifford for a reductio absurdum: ��It is wrong always, everywhere, and for every one, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence� (8). James summarizes his objection to Clifford:

As Pascal noted, each would-be knower juggles the two imperatives, We must know the truth, and We must avoid error. Different people incline to give one or the other interpretation more weight. While Clifford prioritizes the avoidance of error, James replies,

Because there are forced options in life, �we cannot (as men interested at least as much in gaining truth as in merely escaping error) always wait with impunity until coercive evidence comes.� James gives several familiar examples of forced options such as moral questions and questions concerning personal relations (e.g. standing aloof waiting for evidence that someone else likes you before initiating with them is bound to lead to no friendship). James astutely observes,

Finally, religion is a forced option, perhaps the most significant one we face in life. James writes,

On top of this impressive critique of skeptical religious agnosticism, James makes the crucial argument concerning what type of evidence is permitted to speak in adjudicating genuine options such as religion. What commonly happens is that those of a scientific background, raised on materialistic metaphysical assumptions, refuse to admit internal, subjective evidence, i.e. evidence from one�s emotions and experiences. James writes,

This is a truly crucial point for making a philosophically sound judgment. We must not exclude a priori internal evidence which may prove an essential part of the true hypothesis. The right method, then, is to examine whether the materialists� or the theists� accounts of internal experience are the most convincing. This method will save us from such notorious mistakes as the �genetic fallacy,� a common mistake of atheists trying to explain religion. A philosophy textbook explains, �To think that a thing I explained fully by its origin and needs no further analysis or logical interpretation is an example of the genetic fallacy� (Titus 380). Materialists� arguments often succeed despite the fallacy only because so many of those considering the argument have an implicit materialistic metaphysic which disqualifies internal evidence automatically by interpreting it as a natural state related only to molecules and atoms. There is good historical evidence for this. In other ages, when materialistic metaphysics were not so ubiquitous as today, we rarely hear of such arguments (Xenopanes is an example of an ancient with this argument), so they could not have been very impressive to the people then.

A classic example of the genetic fallacy comes from The Future of an Illusion by Sigmund Freud. Freud argues that the human need for a father-figure causes people to project a God. Even if he�s right about the need for a father figure, he hasn�t made a significant point for his case, because the theist can just as well explain this need in terms of Pascal�s �God-shaped vacuum in the human heart.� If the theist is right, this need is exactly what we would expect to find. Similarly, Ludwig Feuerbach argued that Christianity is a kind of wish-fulfillment, a way we satisfy our own deepest longings, desires, and hopes for love, acceptance, security, and triumph over nature� s limitations and death. But if Christianity is true, it is consistent to suspect that God has designed us in such a way that �our hearts are restless until they rest in [God],� to quote the beginning of Augustine�s Confessions. Also, the human fear of death may, for all we know, just as well be the longing of the soul for its permanent residence with God (as the Christian would interpret it) as an irrational and escapist wish (as the atheist would interpret it).

There are two ways to interpret such observations about human needs, and the theist and atheist both interpret the facts according to their own views, thus arguing in a circle. The atheist will accuse the theist that he is just believing what he wants to believe (in order to escape death, for example), but the theist can just as well accuse the atheist of believing what he wants to believe (in order to have sovereignty over his own life and to avoid dealing with sin). The careful philosopher must ask himself, �Are these type of genetic arguments good ways to adjudicate the religious question since they can go either way?� I submit that the best way to test these arguments is to investigate real examples of believers and disbelievers and see which interpretation seems most accurate, though this is quite difficult without letting metaphysical assumptions sway the analysis. The matter cannot be decided either way on such flimsy grounds, and therefore these arguments ought to be the least convincing to us.

James, unlike many positivists, has an acute realization of the whole person�s needs, as seen in the following highly-instructive passage against religious agnosticism:

James proceeds to point out another problem, the issue of how belief entails action:

James concludes with a quotation from Fitz James Stephen, which will serve to challenge and inspire us for the awaiting task:

When we start with the actualities of human experience, we are making a sincere and determined effort to ground our investigation in the real facts of existence. We are avoiding the all-too-easy trap of idealism and rationalism, which produce internally consistent worldviews, but which do not relate to our lives, leaving us high-and-dry. Soren Kierkegaard wrote that G.W.F. Hegel, the imminent leader of German Idealism, �told me everything about the world except one thing: what it is to be a man and to live and to die.� Kierkegaard polemically ridiculed Hegel in other ways, too. Kierkegaard said that Hegel�s system was so huge and all-encompassing that it ought to be esteemed as a work of art; Hegel�s mistake was believing this creative accomplishment of his mind was true. Kierkegaard also said Hegel was like a man staring at the heavens so intently that he forgot about himself and fell into a manhole. Finally, Kierkegaard told the story that Hegel�s system was like a map of the world handed to you when you wanted to find a street address in Copenhagen. These three jabs are witty pointers to an important fact. Consistency by itself doesn�t say much about the truth of a system in this actual world, only about its aesthetic appeal to our rationality. In our approach, we are careful to avoid Hegel�s mistake. On the other hand, in our appeal to actualities, we are also careful to allow for internal evidence and not being reductionist by an a priori exclusion of anything immaterial, such as innate ideas, souls, minds, or God. Our approach seeks to avoid the ungroundedness and irrelevance of idealism and rationalism as well as the reductionism and naturalistic chauvinism of materialism and empiricism.

Another way to approach this question is as follows: Every philosophy must start somewhere, so what better place is there to start than the Actualities you cannot deny? What better place to start than with the premises which are more certain than any conclusion which could be deduced from them? Philosophy is about explanations, and every explanation leaves something unexplained; this is not a fault of the explanation, for an explanation, by its very nature, requires something unexplained with which to do the explaining. As Mill writes, �To be incapable of proof by reasoning is common to all first principles; to the first premises of our knowledge, as well as to those of our conduct� (Mill 192). The Actualities are nothing other than First Principles, premises of knowledge.

Now, what are the actual data we shall accept as given, from which to argue back to the preconditions of possibility?

1. Logic and reason exist

2. Truth exists

3. The Unlivability Falsification Theorem is actual as a principle for adjudicating genuine options

4. An enduring self exists

5. Knowledge is actual

6. The universe, i.e. the external world, exists

7. Other minds exist

8. Morality exists

9. Love and altruism exist

10. Human transcendence exists

11. Libertarian Human freedom and responsibility exist

12. Paradox of human nature exists (noble yet cruel)

13. Paradox of Human Personalism exists (personal yet limited)

14. Purposive Order exists

15. Genuine Options exist

16. Beauty exists

17. Natural Regularity exists

18. Scientific Knowledge exists

19. Existence is better than non-existence

20. Human fear of non-being exists

21. Religious needs exist

22. Knowledge of Supernatural Correlative Concepts exists

23. Art exists

24. Agreement about the Rationes and Actualities Exists

-----

25. Wonder (sense of Good) exists

26. Moral and Natural Evil exist

27. Change exists

28. Meaning exists

29. Language exists (Percy)

30. Idea of justice exists

31. Universal acknowledgment of the Human Problem/Wrongness is actual (implies knowledge of the fall; Pascal: �If man had never been anything but corrupt, he would have no idea wither of truth or of bliss. We once enjoyed a level of goodness from which we have fallen� (65).)

32. Diversion is actual

These actualities are the common ground of my apologetic, which I believe everyone can and must accept, and from which a solid argument to Christianity can be constructed. If there are other actualities I have inadvertently excluded, I trust they will only offer additional support for my conclusions. While Descartes started from only one actuality, #4 (or at least claimed to do so), then built a deductive argument from it, I start with twenty-three Actualities and build a converging argument from them. The converging argument starts at many places and argues toward one conclusion (a consistent, livable belief set); the deductive argument starts at one place and argues toward one conclusion. So, all of Descartes� system rested on his one starting point, which turned out not to be indubitable; whereas even if readers reject a number of my Actualities, they may still be convinced of my conclusion by other Actualities. This is the very great advantage of my system.

This seems a very odd way to write a philosophy paper. Aren�t philosophers concerned with achieving objective, necessary, deductive conclusions? When possible, certainly. But history and experience have shown us that the most existentially-important questions rarely have such certain answers. Moreover, each of us lives our own life, for which we alone are ultimately responsible, based on what we decide to believe in light of available information. Therefore, it is my conviction that every individual reader must search out the Actualities for himself or herself, not relying on intellectual authorities to decide what is respectable and prestigious to believe. Too much is at stake for that.

But why these particular twenty-three Actualities? Why not others? These particular �givens,� are of course, objectionable. For example, some say morals do not exist, except say, as socially-derived norms conducive to the survival of a society. Behaviorists and others say human freedom is an illusion; our supposed ability to choose and direct events is really only the operation of mechanically determining laws of physics, biochemistry, psychology, and sociology. Buddhists say that non-existence is better than existence. I will now defend these actualities. Different readers will be doubtful about the actuality of different proposed Actualities; some readers may be already convinced of all of them. Readers who have particular objections may wish to skip to the defense of only those objections; readers with no objections may wish to skip to the following section on preconditions of possibility.

This actuality is the most important to defend at this juncture, for without it, we cannot proceed at all. Logic is based on the deductive syllogism and the Law of Non-Contradiction, i.e. �Proposition A is not non-A.� When one claims that �The law of non-contradiction does not exist,� in an effort to deny the actuality of logic, he is claiming the contradiction of the proposition �The law of contradiction exists.� In other words, the very act of denying the Law of Non-Contradiction requires one to use the Law. Not only is it impossible to thus escape logic, but it is also unlivable to deny the actuality of logic. Think what the world would be like if it could simultaneously be true that I exist and don�t exist, and that God both exist and does not exist, and that Fred is my both my brother and is not my brother, and that Elizabeth is both reliable and unreliable, and that I am both typing on the computer and not typing on the computer, etc. Obviously, this is absurd.

We must assume this to do anything in life. Furthermore it is impossible to deny without in the process affirming it. Should I claim that truth does not exist, I would only be making an absolute claim about the state of the world, namely that truth does not exist, a self-refuting claim.

I defend this actuality next because it will be the basis of my replies to the objections against the other actualities. Because it is the basic methodological principle for this entire inquiry, I will spend some time on it to insure I have adequately explained and defended it.

The Universal Falsification Theorem follows from actuality #2 and is based on the definition of truth: correspondence between theory and reality as tested by experience and knowledge (the other actualities). In the words of E.J. Carnell, truth is �a quality of that judgment or proposition which, when followed out into the total witness of facts in our experience, does not disappoint our expectations [from the judgment]� (Introduction to Christian Apologetics, 45). Thus, a true belief, along with its implications, must be livable. The negative form of this, the logical contrapositive, is: any belief which cannot be lived out or whose implications cannot be lived out, cannot be true. This negative form is the Unlivability Falsification Theorem. A more simple way to say this is �if it�s true, it�s got to work,� and negatively, �if it doesn�t work, it just can�t be true.�

Notice this reasoning is not arguing that just because something works, it is therefore true, which clearly does not follow. A theory which works may be true (or might not be); but a theory which does not work simply cannot be true. This point is extremely important in distinguishing our method from the Pragmatists�. The Pragmatists do argue that if a theory works, therefore it is true. As a result of this faulty method, they proceed to redefine truth as �only the expedient in the way of our thinking, just as �the right� is only the expedient in our way of behaving� (James, Pragmatism 100). The pragmatists end up with relative, plastic truth constantly being reworked and redefined as people come into contact with new experiences that act as a kind of antithesis for a new dialectical progression towards the ever-distant Truth. Thus pragmatic �truth� has no necessity (it is plastic) and no universality (truth is a way of thinking relative to every individual). Pragmatists admit that what they label as �truth� is �opinion� or �expediency.� This is not our objective nor our understanding of truth. Relativism is playing with words. We are concerned with true truth. We carefully avoid the pragmatic fallacy in method in order to preserve significant, meaningful truth, i.e. true truth, with necessity and universality, rather than relativistic expediency. (At this point, it is necessary to defend our repudiation of relativism. Relativism is logically self-refuting in that it claims to be truly true in its declaration that all is relative. But all cannot be relative, because then their premise could not be truly true. What the relativist wants is to have his relativism affirmed as true truth, necessary and universal, the very thing he cannot have under his own rules. If the relativist cannot see his fallacy, he should look more carefully.) As G.K. Chesterton explains, �I agree with the pragmatists that apparent objective truth is not the whole matter; that there is an authoritative need to believe the things that are necessary to the human mind. But I say that one of those necessities is precisely belief in objective truth. . . . Pragmatism is a matter of human needs; and one of the first of human needs is to be something more than a pragmatist� (Chesterton, Orthodoxy 36).

Since we don�t know which explanation of the universe is true (that�s what we�re trying to figure out!), the Unlivability Falsification Theorem, i.e. the negative form of principle entailed in the definition of truth, will be more useful as a tool for eliminating false theories than the positive form, which cannot identify true theories:

Modus Ponens (Positive form):

If X is true, X will work.

X is true.

Therefore, X will work.

[But we don�t antecedently know if X is true. This is what we�re trying to discover!]

Modus Tollens (Negative form):

If X does not work, X is not true.

X does not work.

X is not true.

Elimination:

X and Y are the only possibilities; therefore either X or Y is true.

X does not work; therefore X is not true.

Therefore Y is true.

This method of elimination proves more useful than one might think, since there are very few possible basic postulates on which the plethora of worldviews are built (for example, the supernatural must either exist or not exist). By simple process of elimination, if we can eliminate two out of three options by the Unlivability Falsification Theorem, say, and are left with a third option which is livable, we will be justified in confidently claiming to have found the truth in the matter. The confidence that there is only one truth which alone will not be disproven by the Unlivability Falsification Theorem, provided we take enough data into consideration, is nothing but a corollary to the definition of truth, for since truth is correspondence with reality, two contradictory theories cannot both correspond to reality. This approach is a version of the classic reductio ad absurdum, an method of argument which postulates that the results of assuming an opponent�s position will be more irrational than the results of one�s own position. To prove this, one assumes the opponent�s position and reduces it to absurdity, thus indirectly arguing for your position as the remaining alternative. My claim is not only that positions which deny the actualities can be reduced to absurdity, but that they are necessarily false.

Like logic, the Unlivability Falsification Theorem is necessary and self-evident and must be assumed in order to deny it. Consider the claim that �I can live without the Unlivability Falsification Theorem. It is therefore not necessary.� The claim, in its contrapositive form, can be stated as �I cannot live with the Unlivability Falsification Theorem.� Now if one cannot live with it, thus falsifying it, he is in fact using the theorem!

How will I use this theorem to defend the other purported actualities? What I am arguing is not that these �givens� are theoretically indubitable (Descartes and Hume have shown us that nothing conceivable is indubitable), but rather that they are necessary beliefs. By necessary, I mean that the denial of them is impossible to live out consistently. Since by the Unlivability Falsification Theorem, their denial is false, and they must either be actual or not, they must be actual. We cannot both deny them and live without them. Therefore, we are left a tertium quid: we must either hold them and follow them, or reject them yet live according to them anyway, or not live at all. I think it is clear that the first of the three options is the only acceptable one.

While this logical defense of the Unlivability Falsification Theorem may seem obscure to some readers, I think it will be readily apparent to most readers that the Unlivability Falsification Theorem is part of basic common sense and not a high-and-dry abstract principle like the God of the Ontological Argument (�the Being than which none greater can be conceived�).

If the Postmodern reader objects that he can live without believing in these actualities, albeit inconsistently, and that he therefore need not submit to and acknowledge my argument, I highlight the fact that contradiction cannot be part of truth (refer back to my defense of logic as self-evidently true). No one concerned with truth can go this direction. And no one can be unconcerned about truth unless he believes non-existence is better than existence, for seeking to live successfully is concern about truth. In this case, the objector should refer to the defense of the actuality that existence is better than non-existence below. If one claims that just existing, without seeking to live successfully is truth, he is playing with words; his belief is that just existing is the way to live successfully.

In defending my claim that it is impossible to deny the actualities listed above and then live consistently by their denial, I appeal to the life experience of the reader. Of course, there is no way to hypothetically defend my claim that some beliefs can be consistently lived out while others simply cannot. This can only be known through experience. I argue with the relativist and the behaviorist, not that their beliefs are untenable or impossible (i.e. logically contradictory), but that they are unlivable. I consider this a strength of my argument that it is not purely discursive and deductive, but that it builds on real experience of real people in the real world. It may not deductively entail its conclusion, but I suspect it will be more convincing on the grounds of its real-life foundation. My confidence in this comes from observations of myself and others in changing beliefs. Typically people change beliefs when and only when they find some aspect of their worldview that they cannot live out, which is thereby causing problems for them, indicating something is wrong with their beliefs. Far from a high-and-dry abstract principle, the Unlivability Falsification Theorem is part of the way we all live. It is ingrained in the nature of reality.

You will observe that the Unlivability Falsification Theorem is an application of the G.E. Moore shift on the conclusions of today�s widespread materialistic worldview. The relativist says no morality exists. But if I know anything, I know that morality exists (because I cannot successfully live as though it does not); there must be a mistake or a faulty premise in his argument. The behaviorist says that human freedom is an illusion; but if I know anything, I know that human freedom is real (because I cannot consistently live as though it is illusory).

In the book Surprised by Joy, C.S. Lewis offers a good explanation of precisely what is meant by �unlivability�:

We can see from his examples that when Lewis writes of his inability to believe, he means the inability to live out such beliefs without constantly having to contradict them.

The everlasting struggle between dogmatists and skeptics is characterized by the tension between the necessities of belief for human life and the possibilities of doubt about these necessities. We may need to believe that there are other minds �out there,� but how do we know this necessary belief is true? Our various organs of life, both physical and mental, are of unknown origin, so the necessities of these organs may not be necessary in terms of truth about the universe. Blaise Pascal summarizes this point well:

Pascal�s natural intuition is very much the same as what we are calling the given actualities. Pascal astutely points out that no skeptic can maintain his skepticism in good faith or sincerity. The skeptics of his day admitted as much.

In his Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes, Pascal�s chief skeptical opponent, wrote that his skeptical endeavor was highly superficial. Descartes writes, �The great benefit of [my] arguments is not, in my view, that they prove what they establish � namely that there really is a world, and that human beings have bodies, and so on � since no sane person has ever seriously doubted these things� (Descartes 75). In considering �highly probable opinions� which are nonetheless questionable, such as the reliability of the senses, Descartes writes, �I think it will be a good plan to turn my will in completely the opposite direction and deceive myself, by pretending for a time that these former opinions are utterly false and imaginary� (Descartes 79). In both cases, Descartes� doubt is mere pretense, since sanity involves belief based on rational probability (i.e. what no reasonable person seriously doubts). Descartes� methodology is plainly inconsistent with his own ethic of belief. While Descartes claimed he had overcome all doubt, later philosophers have shown that he did nothing of the sort, and that his radical skepticism is insurmountable. Descartes evidently did not appreciate the power of skepticism; if he had, he would not have made this confident claim to knowledge while he was supposedly doubting everything; if he had, he would have realized that skepticism can devise grounds of doubt for anything.

David Hume, in his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, made precisely this point about Descartes. Cartesian skepticism starts by doubting not only all our former opinions and principles, but even our faculties, because our faculties are of unknown origin (they could have been designed by a deceiving evil demon). Starting here, one can arrive only at a nihilistic conclusion; proving God in order to justify the reliability of our faculties does not work for we must use our faculties to argue for or against his existence. Hume concludes, �The Cartesian doubt, therefore, were it ever possible to be attained by any human creature (as plainly it is not) would be entirely incurable; and no reasoning could ever bring us to a state of assurance and conviction upon any subject� (Hume 103). Significantly, Hume considers Descartes� doubting purely impossible and superficial. Instead of Cartesian skepticism, Hume advocates �moderate skepticism�: �to begin with clear and self-evident principles, to advance by timorous and sure steps, to review frequently our conclusions, and examine accurately all their consequences . . . are the only methods, by which we can ever hope to reach truth, and attain a proper stability and certainty in our determinations� (Hume 103). Therefore, Hume, the skeptic par excellence, conceded that clear and self-evident principles must be the starting point for any significant thought. However, Hume also knew that there is no reasonable basis for trusting one�s senses or believing in an external world; Descartes� claim that ideas represent external objects is no more probable than any other assumption without a reasonable basis. The external world is �probable� only in the sense that our �natural instinct� suggests so. Therefore, Hume is encouraging readers to assume unreasonable starting points (Actualities) for philosophical argument. How can he, as a skeptic, do so? Hume realizes that we do have knowledge and that it would be more absurd to deny that knowledge than to admit the arationality of our starting point of natural intuition. Hume calls the Problem of Error �trite� and admonishes the Pyrrhonist skeptics for laboring over vain theories which are overthrown the moment one situates his or her thinking in the real world. Pyrrhonists used doubt to inquire and to debate, but not to choose or make conclusions; all judgment should be suspended given the lack of certain knowledge. Hume explains,

Hume includes among natural instincts a real distinction between vice and virtue, and between beauty and deformity, the sentiments of praise and blame, the reliability of the senses, the existence of the external world, and the reality of causation. �And these sentiments are not to be controlled or altered by any philosophical theory or speculation whatsoever� (Hume 68). Hume�s great counsel is to �Be a philosopher; but, amidst your philosophy, be still a man� (Hume 4).

The great skeptical projects of the greatest modern skeptics were, of their own admission, pretending, excessive, trivial, amusement, trite, futile, and above all, smoke before the necessary of natural intuition. These skeptics had the integrity and good faith to admit as much. But many skeptics today mouth their sophomoric objections, then walk off and live in complete contradiction to the skeptical beliefs they supposedly hold. A rigorous application of the Unlivability Falsification Theorem is the only cure for this hypocrisy.

Hume says �Be a philosopher; be still a man.� I say, �Be a man; be still a philosopher.� With the existentialists, we must reject all shallow, vapid, and irrelevant uses of thought divorced from the real world and real human life. Our minds must be applied to life, to the existing human individual, who intends to live, and live well, and to decide and act, if these things be rationally possible; not to the hypocritical game-playing skeptic who gains amusement from concocting objections involving evil demons. The Pyrrohinists may do as they please, but we shall not allow them to accuse us of irrationality merely because we wish to think about life and they wish to think only of trivialities! Before these swine of superficiality we shall not throw our pearls of thoughtful, committed life. We will follow Hume�s advice and start with clear and distinct principles; and what principles are more clear and distinct than the Actualities?

If the genuine, existentially-committed inquirer is still not satisfied, consider one thing more. There is nothing more absurd than the supposition that a need could have arisen that is meaningless. If morality, love, and the external world are �necessary beliefs� (i.e. I cannot in good faith deny them), they cannot be wrong in the sense of not being necessary, i.e. true. In other words, the mere existence of a need does not necessarily mean the need refers to something real that satisfies the need. Critics give the example of a shipwrecked sailor who has a need for fresh water, whose need in no way means that he really has fresh water, since he clearly does not. The analogy does not hold, though, for his need for fresh water does refer to the reality of fresh water somewhere, if not immediately before him. �It would be very odd indeed if we had a fundamental need for something which did not exist� (Evans 57).

There is another related problem afoot here. The philosopher who troubles himself over the problem of other minds is more likely to be laughed off and dismissed as a superficial fool unattached to reality than to be honored as a great thinker. However, in this century many of the Actualities have moved from the sphere of indubitibility to the sphere of uncertainty. Morality, for example, was once considered as much a natural intuition as other minds; but no longer. The doubt is based on origin: if all knowledge is of sociological origin, and we are of atheistic origin, then morality is relative and uncertain. Why has human confidence in natural moral intuition faltered? I suggest that morality is a natural intuition, just as much as other minds, and that a rigorous application of the Unlivability Falsification Theorem will vindicate this claim.

Before proceeding, a final explanatory note may be crucial. I claim that it is impossible for a materialist to consistently live as a human being. One may object, �That�s ridiculous! I know plenty of materialists who are happy people living fruitful lives.� But are those lives consistent with their materialistic beliefs? Many moderns would respond, �Who cares whether or not they�re consistent? Consistency doesn�t necessarily mean anything.� I have already addressed this important objection in my defense of the Law of Non-Contradiction, which many moderns find an antiquated notion. Here, I should also add that modernists and relativists have largely avoided the old term, Hypocrite, which suggests some of the significance of being inconsistent in one�s beliefs and actions.

Friedrich Nietzsche offered what is perhaps the most serious challenge to the Unlivability Falsification Theorem. Neitzsche argues that God must exist for human life as we know it to be lived. But for Nietzsche, it is indisputable that God is dead. Since Neitzsche agrees with us that existence is better than non-existence, he does not consider suicide. So he concludes we must change our nature. We must become ubermench, literally over-men. �Man is a bridge,� writes Nietzsche, �Man is something that must be overcome.� According to historian of philosophy Richard Tarnas, Nietzsche�s belief in the ubermench is the �ultimate statement of belief in evolutionary human deification� (The Passion of the Western Mind). In other words, Nietzsche believes in God, too. He just believes that humanity will become that God. Feuerbach had argued several decades earlier that humanity was already divine, perfect, and infinite, and was worshipping itself in its projection of itself, i.e. God. The two pressing questions remaining are, �How reasonable is it to believe in the ubermench� and �Which is more likely, ubermench or God?,� for both are supernatural and both are removed from present experience. Nietzsche writes, �He who no longer finds what is great in God must find it nowhere. He must either deny it or create it.� The ubermench is supposed to create it. Nietzsche�s writings such as The Gay Science are marked with a gay, playful nihilism buoyed up by his optimism that the ubermench messiah will come. In his diary, though, Nietzsche repudiated his own doctrine of eternal recurrence: �I do not wish to live again. How have I borne life? By creating. What has made me endure? The vision of the Ubermench who affirms life. I have tried to affirm life myself�but ah!� Several years before going insane, Nietzsche wrote, �My life is now comprised in the wish that the truth about all things be different from my way of seeing it: if only someone would convince me of the improbability of my truths!� In Thus Spake Zarathustra, Nietzsche had an imaginary titanic genius say, �Oh grant madness, you heavenly powers! Madness that I at last may believe in myself. . . . I am consumed by doubts, for I have killed the Law. . . . If I am not more than the Law, then I am the most abject [low in spirit or hope] of all men.� From his own life experience, Nietzsche found that his confidence the Unlivability Falsification Theorem was not normative was unlivable.

The other major proponent of Prometheanism, i.e. a superman theory, was George Bernard Shaw. Shaw, like Nietzsche, found this view unlivable (as well as unrealistic). At the end of a life committed to atheism, Shaw commented, �I am ready to admit after contemplating the world and human nature for sixty years that I see no way out of the world�s misery but by the way which would be found by Christ�s will.� In other words, the superman solution to the world�s problems was a big mistake! Using the Unlivability Falsification Theorem, and this unlivability data from the two most consistent and intelligent proponents of Prometheanism, we can argue very strongly that Prometheanism is false.

The reader may object, �But perhaps someday, in the very distant future, humanity will become ubermench, and we should believe in that day. If we don�t wager everything on that faith in this messiah, we will never reach it.� Perhaps. But let the reader try to live his own life under this faith and see that it does not prove livable.

What becomes obvious in looking at Nietzsche�s argument is that what is theoretically possible for a human being is not always actually possible. This is often the case in countless matters where our dreams and visions outrun the necessities of human existence. For Plato and Augustine, this was the soul despairing of its attachment to the body. For Kierkegaard, this was the relation between possibility and necessity, infinitude and finitude, which the self moderates. For Sartre, this is the conflict between human transcendence and facticity. However it is expressed, it must be accepted that not all that our minds conceive is possible, and that often such dreams are not only illusory, but also harmful. It must also be accepted that the human self is more than just intellect, and is a whole (even if, as Plato argues, an unnatural whole) with the body. Thus, theologian Karl Barth responds to Feuerbach�s arguments that Christianity is the wish-fulfillment of false �needs� like love, acceptance, forgiveness, and deliverance from death, with the claim that Feuerbach is a �misknower of evil and a �non-knower of death.� It is important that we assert again the importance of having a realistic, livable theory, which takes internal evidence into consideration. In defense of the Unlivability Falsification Theorem, which is grounded in the necessities (needs) of the human condition, we again define needs in terms of livability. Our philosophy must be imminently rooted in reality if it is to solve the problems of life which made us undertake this investigation.

The early Nietzsche calls it strong and energetic and artistic to affirm life when all reason tells us to despair. He may call this strength; we call it unsustainable wishful thinking�in other words, delusion.

This was the one actuality from which Descartes began and attempted to deduce God, the reliability of the senses, the mind-body distinction, and the rest of his philosophy. Later philosophers however have questioned whether this is an indubitable starting point. It is not indubitable, because we do not know for certain whether the self which we have a memory of a moment ago, is really the same as the self we immediately perceive now, or whether it is an illusion, created perhaps by some evil demon. A more fruitful way to approach this question is with the Unlivability Falsification Theorem. We cannot consistently doubt this belief and live in the world. Imagine life when this belief is denied. You do not know if your friend is really the same person you have a memory of being trustworthy, personal responsibility is in flux (e.g., you don�t know whether or not the man in court is a different person than the criminal who did the deed), you don�t even know if the memories you have are genuine, so you don't ever know whether or not to act on them. This is ludicrous!

Anyone who claims not to know anything, in the very act of doing so claims to know something (i.e. the knowledge is impossible), to know what knowing is, to know that he knows it (i.e. he knows what makes knowing possible or impossible), and to exist and to know what existence is.

Many who object to this actuality do so inconsistently, arguing that science offers objective knowledge while philosophy and religion do not (Positivism). Modern philosophy of science has largely exposed this fallacy, primarily on the grounds that science itself rests on indefensible philosophic assumptions. However, there are those who deny the possibility of any objective knowledge, though they grant the existence of truth.

The nihilist will argue that knowledge is not possible. He is committing the �view from nowhere� fallacy. His position is self-contradictory, for he assumes he has real knowledge that knowledge is impossible. Similarly, the European Theater of the Absurd seeks to communicate the belief that communication is impossible and alienation is complete. There is one consistent posture of a nihilist and that was taken by the ancient Greek empiricist Cratylus. He said nothing and waved his finger. If there is no rationality and no knowledge, than all words are meaningless sounds and communication is impossible.

However, even Cratylus, I suppose, could not genuinely doubt that the external world exists and has order and form and regularity. I suppose he may have been aware of some of the other actualities as well.

On some of the more difficult philosophic questions, one�s view of the possibility of knowledge is very much decided by one�s epistemology. If one is a empirical positivist, he will not have much confidence that knowledge of meaning is possible. So, before one eliminates knowledge as a possibility (which one cannot consistently do, anyway) one must exhaust all possible sources of knowledge. One purported source of knowledge is divine revelation. Before anyone can claim that knowledge is impossible, he or she must first investigate and find good reason to reject these possible sources of knowledge.

Most importantly, this objection is canceled by the invocation of the Unlivability Falsification Theorem. As Francis Schaeffer observes, the man who says there is no correlation between subject and object

Truth relativists will play fast and easy with the word truth, but the falsifying contradictions in their position are plain to see in the following dialogue between a relativist and two theists:

Nobody can consistently live life with the belief that the external world exists.

The solipsist must continually engage in activities such as eating, drinking, communicating, working for a living, pursuing love, and making plans and goals, all of which depend on the existence of the external world, thus contradicting solipsism.

The Postmodern anti-realist, such as Richard Rorty, for all his talk about individuals creating their own external realities, must admit that objects possess a reality which, from all indications, transcends particular minds. That every person I have ever met sees the external world in very much the same way as I do cannot be purely coincidental. That when I open my eyes I cannot choose what I see, as Berkeley notes, refutes the radical subjectivist position. Similarly Descartes asks, �what is my reason for thinking [my ideas] resemble these things [objects in the external world]?�, and answers, �I know by experience that these ideas [of an external world] do not depend on my will, and hence that they do not depend on me. Frequently I notice them even when I do not want to: now, for example, I feel the heat whether I want to or not� (Descartes 89).

We constantly live in interaction with other people, whom we must assume exist outside our own minds because their actions is not under the control of our will and with whom we must interact in ways (like persuasion) that presuppose they exist independently of our minds.

The actuality of morals is often denied today by moral relativists, generally Postmodern in worldview. Again, I argue that their position is disproven by the Unlivability Falsification Theorem. My reply to the relativist would go something like this,

Moral relativists typically resort to the argument that there can be no absolute morals because everywhere we look the specific morals people follow are different. This argument is so widespread that it is almost hard to see through its shallowness. Just because there are differences in the specific cultural manifestations of general principles which are strikingly similar in every known culture, the relativist thinks he has an irrefutable empirical case. However, to the contrary, the evidence of widespread general agreement on moral principles is empirical support for absolute morals.

Moreover, even if this were not the case, there is no reason to claim that normative morals do not exist just because there are moral differences; perhaps something is wrong with cultures lacking certain morals. It may be that certain cultures are repressing morals. The assumption that if there were morals, they would show, is a strikingly materialistically-driven assumption.

And even if the first two replies were insufficient, the relativists� case against the Unlivability Falsification Theorem is not a mite stronger, and that is the crux of the present argument. An example may be helpful. Jean Paul Sartre, the famous French existentialist, believed that humans can only authenticate themselves by acts of the will independent of any objective standards of morality. Any act of the will is as good as any other. But,

Since Sartre, whose life project was to trace out the implications of a consistently atheistic position, including the repudiation of morals, the skeptic who still fails to feel the force of the Unlivability Falsification Theorem in relation to morality should reconsider his position. Sartre is not the only atheist driven to contradict himself on moral grounds. Albert Camus held both to the absurdity of life and the ethics of human brotherhood and love (Craig 66). Bertrand Russell said that he found his own views �incredible,� because he could not live out his belief that all ethical propositions are matters of personal taste. Russell was a vocal social critic, fiercely opposed to war and sexual restrictions. In light of his persistently contradictory action, Russell conceded, �I do not know the solution� (Craig 66). Nietzsche had a falling out with Richard Wagner over Wagner�s anti-Semitism and German nationalism, yet preached an atheistic world �beyond good and evil (Craig 67).

Definition: Love = unselfish action for another person�s best interest

Virtually everyone, as part of human life, experiences interpersonal love as something real. Often it is experiences through close friendships, parent-child relationships, and husband-wife relationships. Even when part of relationships between spouses, love is irreducible to sex, as seen in aged couples long after the sexual drive subsides. Often the intense desire for another person�s well-being even at great personal cost has nothing even tangentially to do with sex.

Altruism has been explained as disguised egoism. In other words, we do good to others because ultimately we gratify ourselves in so doing. It feels good to be unselfish; it feels good to love. Therefore, the objection goes, altruism does not properly exist; egoism is all that exists. This is a classic example of the view from nowhere fallacy. The objector assumes that if altruism is real, it must always involve actions that are utterly devoid of any pleasure. The altruist doesn�t accept this scheme at all; he affirms that altruism is a rewarding way of life. It involves sacrifices, assuredly, but these sacrifices are well compensated for by the rewards. It is unselfish inasmuch as it requires a repudiation of lower, i.e. exclusively self-centered, pleasures. Among pleasures, says the altruist, the highest pleasure is an inward satisfaction for having acted nobly, not a self-congratulatory pride, but a peaceful, unassuming, satisfaction.

Moreover, just because higher pleasures are associated with altruism in no way requires that they be the motivating factor. But supposing all altruism is always motivated by the desire for the higher pleasures, even the skeptic must at least acknowledge a gradation of pleasures. Otherwise he could not explain why someone who helps an old lady across the street, making himself late for an important appointment experiences a sense of having acted nobly. The skeptic will say, �There are higher and lower pleasures; the pleasure of doing a service is higher than the pleasure of not being embarrassed for being late; therefore the person who helps her across the street is just a more refined egoist than the person who leaves her as he scurries to his appointment.

We can use extreme examples, too. What about individuals sacrificing their lives to save others or for various causes? What of the martyrs? What of patriots and revolutionaries who gladly, joyfully lay down their lives? What of those like Sydney Carton in Dickens� Tale of Two Cities that go to death as a substitute for another, even a rival or enemy? Why is it that an innocent, suffering man crucified for the sins of the world is the most popular hero of all time? Can it be supposed that the altruism = egoism theory explains these incidents in which people have eagerly cut themselves off from enjoying future gratification? The objector will respond, �Of course. These individuals experience the highest rapture possible for the few instants before they die; or, they expect gratification or reward in a future life. Sydney Carton, for example died saying, �Tis a far, far better place I go to than I have ever gone; tis a far, far greater rest I go to than I have ever known� (Tale of Two Cities XXX). So, all these examples, even the extreme ones, can be explained in terms of higher and lower pleasures.

Now, then, on what is this distinction between higher and lower pleasures based? If people can indeed experience higher and lower pleasures, then these pleasures must be objectively higher and the person must make a decision to live at that higher level.

We will stop here, satisfied. Altruism then, as an indisputable actuality, involves higher pleasures that must be chosen in place of lower pleasures.

But the skeptic may still object, claiming that love and altruism do not exist even as higher pleasures. There are different actions, and there are different pleasures; none are higher or lower, only different. To this objection, we can only appeal to the readers� own experience. Is it possible to live in this way, viewing love and the pleasures of altruism as no different than self-centeredness and the pleasures of sadism or materialistic acquisitiveness?

The Zen-Buddhist says �The mind of man is like the wind in a pine tree in a Chinese ink drawing� (God Who is There 113). But can anyone consistently live like this? The radical vegetarian says, �All life is equally sacred.� But can he or she really live that out? To take consciousness and reduce it to the wind in a drawing is to extinguish all that drives human beings, their aspirations, their hopes, their free will, their rationality, and their morality. No one can live like this, for there is nothing left to live for once these are all gone. There may be suffering associated with these things, but the fact that the vast majority of people who have ever lived found life with these things more bearable than suicide to remove them suggests that the Buddhist solution is nonsense. The most extreme vegetarian must destroy some forms of life to survive.

Despite such similarities as bodily form and sexuality, humans are individuated from

animals in at least the following ways: art, creativity, love, morality, religiosity, fear of non-being, and purposefulness.

I argue against the Behaviorist: even if freedom is an illusion, he must live as if we do have freedom. While we may become fatalistic as a result of hearing his doctrine, we still make the decision to believe and act fatalistically, and even if this decision was itself predetermined (which we can never know), we will not have escaped the fact that we must live as though we do have freedom. Furthermore, no naturalistic theory has ever been able to account for human free will very well, least of all that of the Behaviorist.

Moreover, human responsibility is an indispensable, necessary belief. No human society has ever existed that was not based on human responsibility. Human relationships are based on the praise and blame we assign others according to their actions in light of their knowledge. Praise and blame are not just ways we talk; we must believe they are real for them to be effective in the mediation of relationships. Philosophers over the centuries have failed utterly to divorce freedom and responsibility; it is quite clear that we are responsible, and that we are responsible because we have free will.

Now, why does human freedom have to be libertarian, i.e. incompatible with determinism. Compatibalism allows for human choice to be determined, but human freedom is the free willing of the determined choice; or it states that human choice is based on internal rather than external states, such as beliefs, desires, and states of character. But this is a merely a poor dodge of the issue, for whence come the internal states. If we believe in determinism and the causal laws operating internally and externally, the internal states are determined and can be traced back to other causes, and their antecedent causes, to a time before we were born. So, we cannot be really free nor can we be really responsible. If I desire monetary success because my parents did and they did because their parents did, then I am not free or responsible. If I am an atheist because my friend is, and he is because his father is, and his father is because his father was, then I am not really free or responsible in my actions based on the internal state of such beliefs (Williams �Introduction� in Augustine xii-xiii).

The philosophical battles over human nature have raged for centuries. Are people basically good or are they basically evil? There is apparently enough data supporting both sides constantly coming in that disagreement seems unresolvable. We read in the newspaper about Mother Theresa�s work among the poor in Calcutta; we read about the Oklahoma City bomber�both in the same newspaper! We read about a program for helping troubled teenagers; we read about a violent murder�both in the same newspaper. What we are looking at is the paradox of human nature: we are both incredibly noble, at times even godlike, and at other times we are extremely base and vile. Some religions are based on the related view that the human soul is a battleground of good and evil, or that the world is such a battleground, in which humans can choose sides.

Some relativists, however, deny this paradox on the grounds that there is no morality, and therefore no noble and no base actions, only different kinds of action. Can one consistently live with this view? Can one never praise the �noble�-doer and never blame the �base�-doer? Can one never act as though one way acting were better than another, only different (or as though one were worse than another, when harm is intended)? Can one act nobly to express resentment and basely to express gratitude?

By personalism, we mean that the world is composed of irreducible persons, i.e. minds with rational and volitional powers. These persons are capable of virtually unlimited imaginative powers. Persons can think, hope, and dream an infinite number of possibilities. Yet we are limited by such necessities of eating, drinking, sleeping, and excreting. We can contemplate the universe and fathom out its mysteries, but a few hours in a cold lake and we are finished. Shakespeare understood the paradox: �What a piece of work is man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable; in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god: the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals�and yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?� (Hamlet 2.2.327-332). Despite all our abilities, it seems we are just as much ephemeral dust as everything else. Kierkegaard made much of this paradox, which he called the tension between infinitude and finitude, between possibility and necessity. All is possible, but the necessities of live prevent us from devoting ourselves to the infinite possibilities. Similarly, Sartre knew the paradox as the disparity between transcendence and facticity. Humans are caught between the two, neither one nor the other, but somehow both. Pascal put this paradox perhaps most eloquently of all:

Since the earliest days, humans have been fascinated by the purposive order of the universe. It appears as if it were designed by something like a human mind. This is probably the main reason why religion is so widespread the world over. People have reflected, It couldn�t just be like this; it must have been designed by a Creator, i.e. God or the gods. Christian theologians called this the teleological proof of God�s existence; it was always the most compelling argument for God�s existence. Since Darwinism, the teleological proof has been less convincing, though Darwinism in no way destroys the argument. There are three points at which humans have struggled to understand the origin: the universe, life, and humans. Evolutionism seeks only to bridge the transition from life to humans. Scientists have utterly failed to demonstrate how life can come out of non-life. Miller�s experiment proves almost nothing, and his work in the last twenty years has been almost entirely fruitless. Scientists cannot explain the transition of no universe to universe, either.

More importantly, scientists observe that in order for life to have developed and evolved, the earth would have to meet numerous precision requirements. For example, if the earth were a few hundred miles closer or further from the sun, large bodies of water would be impossible and life impossible. There are many more criteria like this. How then can this precision be explained without a Designer? Atheist scientists fall back on the �anthropic principle,� which means that we are here because we are here; if the universe wasn't so fine-tuned, we wouldn�t be here asking such a meaningless question. This is hardly science, though; this is metaphysical naturalism laying down its final authority. Scientists are supposed to look for the best (most likely) theoretical explanation of their observations, not state the implications of their naturalistic prejudices, however unlikely these are. There is simply too much precision to account for it as a mere coincidence. Many scientists will acknowledge this, at which point they fall yet further back on the �multiple universes theory,� which states, For all we know, there could be multiple universes in other dimensions that we don�t know about, so it�s impossible to specify the probability of the precision tuning of our own. While this is not impossible (it implies no universal contradiction), this theory is even less likely than the anthropic principle.

But the highest test is, Can anyone live consistently with any of these unlikely, evasive hypotheses? No. As we live life, we are constantly making decisions about what to do with ourselves in both the short-term and long-term future. How to we make these decisions? We almost make them teleologically, i.e. on the basis of future outcomes which we weigh one against the other. In other words, we believe that there is a purpose running through the present events toward future events. We must believe in the reality of this purpose if we are to go on living. Once we really believe there is no purpose, we will have no reason to act or even exist. So, suicide. But we cannot consistently live in denial of purpose in human life.

Refer to the section on William James above and Part B on the genuine options.

Bernard Berenson (1865-1959) is an example of a famous modernist who could not consistently live out his belief system. Just as Sartre, whose beliefs negated morality, found it impossible to live out a consistent disbelieve in morality, so Berenson, whose beliefs negated the existence of beauty, found it impossible to live out of a consistent denial in beauty. The difference between Sartre and Berenson was that Berenson not only found it impossible to live without beauty, but went so far in his self-contradiction that he directed his life in the pursuit of, and study of, beauty. Berenson, during his life, was the world�s foremost expert on Renaissance art. He was famous for his open marriage with Mary Costelloe (open meaning both parties were free to engage in extramarital affairs), which he defended on the basis of �the animal basis of our nature.� Yet, he found modern art repulsive because it was based on �the preconceived assumption that the squalid, the sordid, the violent, the bestial, the misshapen, in short . . . low life was the only reality!� (Schaeffer, The God Who is There, 69). His passionate love for Renaissance art was based precisely on the rejection of human = animal, which was the basis of his modernist beliefs and love life.

The existence of beauty may seem easily refutable, since it is perhaps more subjective than the true or the good. Oddly enough, though, I have found that beauty is the one absolute atheists commonly hold onto after (purportedly) rejecting the possibility of truth and the reality of normative morals. A peer once told me not to get upset if studying philosophy yielded no truth, because even if all else failed, I could always experience and know the beauty of a sunrise. My claim is that to reject even this belief is something physically and psychically impossible because of the constitution of human nature. Once again, relativism of beauty is not an option consistent with what we really believe when we speak of beauty. When we say something is beautiful, we do not mean that that thing possesses certain qualities which we find attractive as a result of our socio-cultural conditioning. No, we mean that the sunrise has a real, meaningful content of beauty. Relativistic talk of beauty is meaningless; it is playing with words in such a way that their connotations give the impression of meaningful, substantive content, which in fact is totally absent.

All science is based on the fact of natural regularity. All life is also based on natural regularity. We plan our lives around day and night, around the constant conjunction of people�s character and their actions, around the regularity of the seasons, and many other regularities. Moreover, we believe this regularity will continue, though we have no basis for doing so, as Hume noted in his famous Enquiry. It is regular; that is an Actuality. If we deny this, we cannot consistently live; we can hardly live at all.

According to Einstein, the most remarkable thing about the universe is that we can know something about it (God who is There 179). When we apply the formulas our own minds devise to explain the universe and then they work and make predictions upon which we can build technological industries, we are really knowing the universe.

A Buddhist may object to my repudiation of his central doctrine. First, we should observe that if he is right, there is no reason to concern ourselves with the true and the good and living anyway. Secondly, we should realize that the Buddhists� major premise is a denial of the Unlivability Falsification Theorem. If someone rejects the Unlivability Falsification Theorem on the grounds that unlivability is the state of the universe due to suffering, this is despair. Perhaps he is right, but we will first have to come to agree with the Buddhists� first premise that existence is wholly bad before we can agree to their conclusion that the best answer is escape to the bliss of non-existence. Their conclusion involves our abandoning the Criterion of Human Flourishing as illusory, along with all the other actualities. I believe it is impossible for someone to be born with the despairing view that non-existence is better than existence. If one is to accept this view and repudiate the other actualities, he will have to first despair of finding the true and the good.

In humans, there is an irrational fear of non-being which is utterly unique in nature. Yes, animals have survival instinct, but will not go to endless cost and desperate effort to prevent death. Certainly this fear is more acute in technological societies, where more medical resources are available for extending life. However, this fear is a universal human Actuality.

Even such an advanced atheist as Nietzsche said that humans need God. He meant in part that humans need God as a guarantor of objective morality, but I suspect he also meant

humans need God as a Real Being on whom they can cast themselves in times of difficulty. I have talked to many atheists who pray (in fact, I can�t think of any whom I know have not); invariably they pray when life gets tough and they need supernatural aid, strength, and encouragement. Now, when I have queried them on their inconsistency, they minimize it: �Yeah, but that was a time when I wasn't so strong� (as if it won�t happen again); or �What I do in weak moments isn�t an indication of my true beliefs.� This latter response is very typical, and very typically blind. It is blind to the fact that weak moments are as real as strong moments, and that a belief system which has a gaping hole at every weak moment is a belief system which cannot deal with real life. Only extreme superficiality could believe something which experience has so thoroughly falsified. I also find it interesting that many virtual-atheists will turn to religion as a �source of strength� while not really believing any particular creed. While this seems very superficial and inconsistent to me, it does illuminate the fact that many atheists, even if unwilling to change their beliefs, are at least willing to admit the unlivability and inadequacy of their beliefs due to religious needs.

We have ideas of infinite, absolute, unmoved, unchanging, uncaused, noncontingent, and perfect.

Art exists: painting, sculpture, music, photography and film, literature, and architecture.

A truly remarkable Actuality is that people agree on the Actualities. They agree on them because they cannot consistently deny them. Before I simply claimed that you cannot consistently deny them; now I am claiming that no one can. This is truly incredible, but this is in fact just what we observe. Consider this passage on the Rationes as necessary criteria from Carnell�s book:

Another way to say this is, �all knowledge, from physics to religion, is intuitive.� It is intuitive, not in the sense of being irrational, but of requiring a prior cognitive structure in order to be rationally communicable or intelligible.

People also agree on the Rationes, i.e. the eternal criteria for the true, the good, and the beautiful. Before I claimed that you must assume these things exist; now I claim that everyone must. It is simply an incredible fact that all human minds are rational and that they all possess the rationes? This is an obvious fact which needs no defense, though it does demand an explanation. Though it is obvious, Postmodernists will quickly deny this claim. Look at all the cultures which have different rationes, they will say. But the fact is, every culture can learn knowledge from others. The Chinese culture, for millennia developing independently from the Western culture, was able to learn and accept the philosophy and science of the West. This ability to communicate across boundaries, which implies agreement about the rationes, is a remarkable actuality. We cannot consistently deny this actuality when we communicate with others, assuming we can appeal to constant criteria of judgment. Postmodern philosophers making arguments to convince others is surely the most contradictory action a philosopher has ever made.

******

In conclusion, I assert that the twenty-three �givens� listed above should be taken as Actualities (from which we will argue to the preconditions of possibility) because they are necessary beliefs. In most cases, the Unlivability Falsification Theorem commonly vouches for their status as necessary beliefs.

Now, we will examine the Actualities carefully to determine their preconditions of possibilities. The Actualities are like mysteries calling out for our attention and explanation. The are our best clues to the meaning of the universe, and they are all around us, every day, all day long. To adequately explain each Actuality, we should seek its necessary and sufficient precondition(s) of possibility, just as Leibnitz did with his Principle of Sufficient Reason. Again, many readers may not yet have been adequately convinced that they cannot consistently deny the actualities; so they should concentrate their attention on the preconditions of possibility for those actualities they do accept. Again, because Transcendental Pragmatism works by a converging method of argument, readers need not accept every actuality to be persuaded of the ultimate conclusions. Also due to the converging argument, many of the preconditions of certain actualities will be other Actualities (which the reader might not have accepted independently); many Actualities will share preconditions of possibility (which might be accepted on the basis of one Actuality but not on the basis of another). I will list both the positive and negative preconditions of possibility will be given. By negative preconditions of possibility, I mean those systems which are ruled out by contradicting the Actuality being addressed, or by contradicting the preconditions of possibility for that Actuality. The negative preconditions of possibility will be listed after the positive ones, preceded by �not-�.

For logic to exist, either God must exist as the principle of Logic or creator and sustainer of logic or else an assumption of unsupported logicalism must be invoked. If unsupported logicalism is opted for, it requires the belief that the universe is logical just because it is; it bears the marks of a rational mind because it does. But a rational mind is not inherently part of materialism�s nature. At best it is a late-comer to naturalistic evolutionary development. So, this leaves us with idealism and theism. Idealism holds that mind or spirit is the basic component of reality. For example Hegel believes reality is the World Spirit (i.e. God, the immanent Mind) coming to self-consciousness in the world. While the God of idealism is much different from the God of theism, some kind of God is required as the precondition of possibility for logic.

For rationality to exist, the human mind must be distinct from the materialists� causal nexus. As Pascal writes, xxx (Pascal p.57,59). If the mind is totally part of nature, then rationality is an illusion, for there is no subject-object distinction. But rationality is not an illusion, so there is a subject-object distinction. This, in turn, requires an immaterial mind (soul), an enduring I, as a precondition of possibility.

Dean Halverson further explains the contradiction between materialism and rationality: �It is inconsistent for a naturalist to argue that the evidence for naturalism is convincing and that one ought to choose it. Why? Because a naturalist says that only matter exists. If that is true, though, then our thoughts are determined by biological stimuli, not by the evidence or by principles of reason. In addition there is no �enduring I� that is doing the reasoning or the arguing� (Halverson 6).

If absolute truth exists, then God must exist as the precondition of possibility. If truth is held to be something God certifies, then truth is not really absolute, but the arbitrary will of a higher being. But if truth is something apart from God, then God himself is subject to that truth; the truth is higher than him; it is God. Therefore, God must exist as the absolute truth.

If other minds are souls, then each must be posited as a unique miracle unless they are created by God. As this is inconsistent with naturalism, naturalism�s alternative, theism must be true.

For morality to exist in the sense we mean when we say that some action is absolutely good and another is absolutely evil, a God must exist. A contemporary atheist ethicist writes,

Likewise, Sartre writes, <<<< {P.OE notes} Not only must God exist for morality to have any meaning, but a specifically personal God must exist. If God is the impersonal essence of Being (pantheism), then all is God. If all is God, then good and evil and both God and there is no distinction between one and the other. Morality presupposes a distinction between good and evil and such a distinction requires a God separate from creation (who created ex-nihilo rather than by extension) as a precondition of possibility. Nietzsche rightly noted, �All purely moral demands without their religious basis must needs end in nihilism.�

We ended the defense of altruism by noting that it involves higher pleasures that must be chosen in place of lower pleasures. So, what are the preconditions of this objective hierarchy of pleasures and of this choice of higher pleasures? The precondition of possibility for the objective existence of higher pleasures is objective morality and the existence of souls. First, if love is not objectively a better way to act than hate, love cannot be a higher pleasure, since both can be pleasures. Second, humans transcend other known life forms in their capacity for these higher pleasures. Yes, mother animals display �selflessness� in defending their offspring; but this is not a higher pleasure in the same way a sacrificial death is a higher pleasure than helping an old lady across the street. At most, we see very low-level altruism in animals. The precondition of possibility for choosing higher pleasures is free will. If we cannot truly chose the higher pleasure of altruism, then love is an illusion. But we cannot live believing love is an illusion; so free will must exist. Finally, the concept of love or altruism requires multiple persons, i.e. other minds.

Humans display a transcendence of animals which defies naturalistic evolutionary theories. This transcendence is typically designated as the possession of a soul.

For humans to be free, they must be in part outside the materialist�s causal nexus. Otherwise, everything they think and do is predetermined. If predetermined, they are not free and cannot be held responsible. Responsibility in addition requires morality as a precondition of possibility, for no one can be responsible for what they freely do if what they freely do is not good or bad.

This Actuality has as its precondition of possibility a personal God. An impersonal God might be moving history in some direction, much like the impersonal force of �inevitable progress,� but that direction could never mean anything purposeful unless it was conceived by a Mind, for purpose is a mode of mind, i.e. a mode of persons only. This is perhaps the best argument for the existence of a personal God. Nicholas Berdyaev, the Russian Christian existentialist became a Christian precisely because he could not doubt that purposive order exists in the universe and particularly in the destiny of man, and because this belief required the existence of a personal God to be intelligible and not lacking an adequate foundation.

For humans to be confronted by genuine options, we must be free�not free from the decisions in each of the options, but able to make a choice. For materialism, being forced to make decisions of belief is absurd; material conditions produce ideas, so no real choices exist except how to appropriate food, clothing, shelter, and labor-power.

According to Postmodernism, all philosophical discussion is nothing more than one type of language game: it is the type of language game which the philosophical community practices in its bid for power. Thus, as Wittgenstein said, �there are no genuine philosophical problems�; all is just talk. On the basis of the genuine options Actuality, we can rule out this system.

Objective beauty implies an Absolute, i.e. God, though this could be an impersonal or personal God. Materialism is thus ruled out.

Often, regularity and confidence in tomorrow are mistakenly counted as evidence of materialism. This is not true, for �regularity is compatible with either Christianity, where God keeps it regular, or with blind naturalism where (goodness knows what!) keeps it regular� (Carnell 234). Theistic supernaturalists believe in miracles, but not as a violation of the causal nexus. They believe in miracles as an rare acts of God that differ from his acts of regularity. The materialist objector apparently thinks that if miracles could happen, the whole universe would be chaotic. Carnell explains, �Since the order of nature can be accounted for by both Christ�s teleology and the mechanical system, one is to choose between the two worldviews . . . Christ can account for metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics; science cannot� (Carnell 234). Either God or blind naturalism is the precondition of possibility for natural regularity.

Science is often regarded as offering objective information. This is simply not true, and modern philosophy of science is helping to make people aware of this. Science rests on a number of preconditions of possibility, which oddly-enough, many scientists do not hold: 1) the subject-object correlation (the intelligibility of the entire universe), 2) the regularity of the universe, 3) Causal connections, 4) objective, changeless truth, 5) an external world, and 6) the objective validity of data (based on an objective external world).

The subject-object distinction first requires a mind distinct from the material flux (soul). The subject-object correlation requires that humans� mental structure resemble the structure of the universe, such that the subject (humans) can truly understand the object (the universe). Francis Schaeffer writes,

What we want, in turn, is a basis for that correlation, i.e. its preconditions of possibility. Materialism can give no adequate epistemological basis for the correlation because it cannot explain the existence of rationality: matter knowing itself is absurd. The precondition of possibility for the subject-object correlation is the existence of a reasonable God who made the universe and the human mind according to the same rational principles.

Kant argued that scientific knowledge, as a type of synthetic a priori knowledge, requires pure concepts of the understanding which structure the noumenal world, such that the phenomenal world contains cause, which empiricism required that we reject. However, humans all possess this cognitive scheme a priori, as Kant notes. If this is so, then either God created the human cognitive structure or an external world exists which brought those structures into being. It is extremely improbable that every human just so happens to have the identical cognitive structure. So, even Kant�s system requires God, since it posits human structuring categories prior to sense experience. Now, if Kant�s system requires a God, there is then no reason for maintaining his phenomenal-noumenal distinction; God can structure the external universe (not just the phenomenal universe!) in the same way he structures the human mind. Therefore, objective causation is a precondition of possibility for science (not just causation as a mental category).

Materialism offers no subject-object distinction, so it cannot explain scientific knowledge, even if it can explain how all human minds possess the same structures a posteriori. Postmodern antirealism is a version of Kantianism, in that it affirms that human minds structure reality, but unlike Kantianism, it denies the objectivity of that structuring (see #5). Finally, Logical Positivism, and indeed all kinds of empiricism, rely on the assumption that the external world is objective and that observations are valid, objective data, not just blips of who knows what.

This implies objective morality as a precondition of possibility. It also requires that the universe is informed by Goodness either as its Creator (God) or its immanent principle. Since such an immanent principle of morality is a mode of mind, this alternative also implies God. The materialist must assume that existence is neither better or worse (only different) than non-existence.

Because this universal human fear is irrational and inexplicable naturalistically (it is unique to humans), it requires human transcendence and immortality as preconditions of possibility.

This actuality is hardly trivial. Neo-orthodox Christianity holds that this is the best proof of God�s existence, since our infinite need implies the infinite God. A character in a John Updike novel says that our dissolution and longing for God is the only evidence he exists: �Why do we feel such loss, but that there was something to lose? . . . So great a fall proves great heights� (Updike 281). While I do not think this is the only evidence, I do think it is important evidence. One thing I especially appreciate about Neo-orthodoxy is its authenticity, its willingness to admit the longing for God and need for God rather than persist in superficial atheism as a belief system which cannot really be lived. So, the precondition of possibility for religious needs is a personal God.

Our ideas of infinite, absolute, unmoved, unchanging, uncaused, noncontingent, and perfect cannot be gotten from sense experience. Nor can they be inferred, since they are all correlatives. Correlatives are concepts which stand in reciprocal relation to one another, depending on this relation for their meaning (e.g. parent and child, truth and error). So, given that we have knowledge of infinitude, say, how can would infer infinitude from a finite world of sense experience? The empiricist might respond, we infer by negation that what the universe is not, must be infinite. But this begs the question. How does the empiricist know what finitude is, since he does not know infinitude, and since, as a correlative, the meaning of finitude depends on knowledge of infinitude. To be able to recognize the finitude in the world, we must know innately what infinitude is. The same goes for the other concepts mentioned. But someone might object, Can�t we get the idea of perfection by inferring it from the different levels of imperfection we observe in people? No, for imperfection depends for its meaning on the idea of perfection. If we didn't know what perfection was, sense experience would tell us only that there was stuff, but not that there were different levels of imperfection.

Descartes made the argument that God must exist since we have the ideas of perfection, infinitude, etc. He responded to the above skeptical objection as follows:

Cold is an idea derived by the negation of hot, and is materially false in the sense that it does not describe an objective reality. Cold may be described as the absence of heat, just as heat may be described as the absence of coldness. Similarly, darkness is the absence of light; or light is the absence (negation) of darkness, depending on which concept is assigned positive reality. Rest may be the absence (negation) of movement, or vice-versa. But negation cannot explain our ideas of infinite, absolute, unmoved, unchanging, uncaused, noncontingent, and perfect.

Since there is no adequate materialist explanation for this Actuality, the precondition of possibility for it is the real existence of these attributes. They really exist, then, in the nature of God. The non-moral attributes could belong to an impersonal God; perfection requires a personal God.

Art is a uniquely human creation which suggests a distinction between human and animal which is qualitative and not merely quantitative, a matter of kind and not merely of degree. As G.K. Chesterton writes,

As Chesterton notes, human transcendence implies a supertemporal impartation of the human mind and artistic creative capacity found nowhere else in nature. The immaterial Imparter of these things must have had at least these himself; thus we have man made in God�s image.

The preconditions of possibility for this agreement, unless we accept billions of unaccounted miracles, is that human possess these as innate ideas and criteria, which can only be adequately explained by a God (maker of ultimate reality) who has made human beings in his own image (with criteria for recognizing ultimate reality), and made them all with this capacity. Without God�s further sustenance of the rationes, there is no meaningful speech and reasoning; but there is meaningful speech and reasoning (i.e. the agreement about the rationes is actual), so God must sustain them. Any other explanation falls short of satisfying the necessary and sufficient conditions of possibility for this truly remarkable actuality. Materialism can explain the agreement, but not rationality itself. Monism can explain the agreement, but cannot explain rationality or morality, both essential to the rationes. Postmodernism cannot explain the agreement, and in fact is built upon the repudiation of it.

The materialist may suspect there is still a way out from the conclusion above the God�s existence is the precondition off possibility for the actualities our lives necessitate that we believe. He will offer the �Equal Assumption� objection. The God hypothesis successfully unites all these actualities under one major premise, the existence of God, but in this system we are constructing, God is still left unexplained. God does the explaining of the Actualities, but what explains God? The objection may go something like this: �I say freedom exists. If you ask me why or how I know, I say �Shut up!� The theist says freedom exists. If you ask him why or how he knows, he says, �Because God exists.� But if you ask him why and how he knows that, then he says, �Shut up!� The only difference between the theist and myself is that we have different hypotheses.� Are we not just as well justified in believing in freedom without an explanation as in God without an explanation? Isn�t one unexplained assumption equally good as another? Not necessarily.

First, we are justified in calling the two assumptions equal inasmuch as both are equally powerful assumptions. An assumption which relates to only one area of our field of knowledge is an ad hoc hypothesis. Such hypotheses bear the appearance of being unrelated to the broader field of knowledge; they are a sign of weakness. Thus, we are not justified in calling two assumptions equal inasmuch as: 1)one assumption detracts from to a coherent worldview, or 2) one assumption leads to an inferior worldview when the other assumption supports a stronger one (i.e. a more unified theory with fewer ad hoc hypotheses). In other words, how we look at the world is a mega-explanation, a system of explanations, which must be consistent not to be falsified. If our explanation of freedom causes a contradiction with our mega-explanation, we must throw out our explanation of freedom or else find a new mega-explanation. If our explanation of freedom is consistent with our mega-explanation, but another explanation of freedom leads to a superior mega-explanation, we should take both the other explanation of freedom and the superior mega-explanation it involves. I think the unsubstantiated belief in freedom runs into irreducible snags on both counts, while the unsubstantiated belief in God falls at neither.

I will demonstrate: You can construct your atheistic worldview in the following way. I accept the following Actualities as unsubstantiated assumptions without which I cannot consistently live: freedom, morality, beauty, consciousness, and love. Before going on, we should observe that with each unsubstantiated actuality our theory becomes more complex and weakened by ad hoc hypotheses. Now the question is what is our mega-explanation? There are basically two options: materialism or some kind of theism. Since you have rejected the existence of God, you are a materialist. Since you are a materialist, you accept the following unexplained assumptions: nothing exists except matter, and higher phenomena are to be explained by lower ones. Now we�ve run into a huge problem: both the unexplained assumptions of the materialistic mega-explanation contradict the unexplained actualities you�ve excepted as given. You find yourself affirming that nothing immaterial exists, yet you believe in freedom, morality, consciousness, and love, none of which are material. You find yourself believing that higher phenomena are to be explained from lower ones, yet you cannot explain freedom, morality, consciousness, and love from lower phenomena (i.e. particles)�that�s why you accepted them as unexplained givens in the first place. So your materialist mega-explanation wholly contradicts your acceptance of the unexplained actualities. This leaves the options of throwing out the Actualities (the Behaviorists chose this route) or changing your mega-explanations (converts to theism chose this route) or believing a set of contradictory beliefs (Postmodernists chose this route). In the latter case, since you have repudiated truth, you have no right to claim that Christianity is not intellectually satisfying (be that true or false), since your own beliefs are already logically impossible!

Now that�s try the same procedure on theism and see what happens. God proves a good explanation for the actualities, thus providing a strong advantage for theism over materialism, in that there is but one major unexplained assumption (God exists) and in that by having an unchanging foundation for your beliefs in the actualities, these beliefs are less likely to change as you try to live your life with the theistic mega-explanation. Now there is also no contradiction between the unexplained assumption of the theistic mega-explanation and the existence of the actualities. The existence of the actualities would be exactly what one would expect given the major premise of theism.

So, the assumption of God verses the assumption of the actualities means the choice between a unified, livable, logically satisfying, superior system, and a self-contradictory, complex, inferior non-system. The choice is easy. Actually, there is no choice, because the second option is logically impossible.

Remember Kant faced this same situation. He knew that causation existed. Yet there was no empirical reason for him to believe causation existed (no one has ever observed a cause). Now, empirical epistemology holds that nothing is in the intellect which is not first in the senses and that knowledge comes only through empirical observation. Empirical epistemology entailed a conclusion that Kant was less sure of than the premise of empirical epistemology which led to it. Kant was sure causation existed; therefore empiricism must be wrong (G.E. Moore shift). So he decided to build a new epistemology on the basis of the preconditions of possibility for the actuality of causation. Look carefully at Kant�s dilemma and note the similarities to our dilemma of the God question. Kant could have said, �I will take the existence of causation as an unsupported assumption, since I know it�s true. I won't bother explaining causation by an innate category (�the pure concepts of the understanding�), because then my explanation would be left unexplained, and one unexplained assumption is as good as another.� But Kant faced a contradiction between the mega-explanation, empiricism, and the particular assumption, causation, just as we are face with a contradiction between materialism and the actualities. Just as Kant was more sure of causation than empirical epistemology, so we are more sure of the actualities than of materialism. Just as Kant saw the weakness of several ad hoc hypotheses (time, space, causation, substance, community, unity, plurality, totality, etc.) compared with one hypothesis which explains them all (Kantian pure concepts of the understanding), so we too see the weakness of several ad hoc hypotheses (freedom, morality, love beauty, truth, etc.) compared with one hypothesis which explains them all (God). And finally, just as Kant, driven by logical necessity (to leave empiricism) and by the attractiveness of a superior, more unified system (Kantianism) which would guarantee the actuality of his categories, turned to Kantianism, so we, driven by logical necessity (to leave materialism) and by the attractiveness of a superior, more unified theory (theism) which guarantees the actuality of the our actualities, turn to theism.

What�s more, there is empirical evidence of some supernatural existence. The scientific evidence is overwhelmingly in support of the big bang, i.e. a creation out-of-nothing with a definite beginning of time. Also, the probability of human existence is so overwhelmingly improbable (unless we resort to the completely unsubstantiated �multiple-universes theory,� which is no more than an attempt to flee from the force of this evidence) that the existence of a God concerned with human life (though the problem of evil is also thus raised) is far more reasonable than its contradiction. No, we can discard this evidence as uncompelling since God�s existence is too weighty a decision to rest upon scientific theories. While this may be true, it is quite unlikely that the theories of physics will change substantially (cf. Einstein�s revision of Newton). More importantly, this is the only positive, direct evidence we have to support the God hypothesis, so it ought not to be brushed aside so easily. Many atheists are finding this evidence compelling.

Finally, there is experiential evidence that God exists. Human beings appear to be by nature religious, worshipful creatures. Many testify to having experienced God working in their lives and mystically encountering him. People through the centuries have found in religion compelling explanations of human problems and answers to them which science and unaided reason cannot achieve. This evidence, too, while it may be explained atheistically (though it hardly need be said that we have already disproven materialism once freedom and/or the other actualities are acknowledged), ought to be carefully considered.

So if we reject the Kantian argument above based on the unlivability of life without the actualities, which can only consistently fit into a theistic framework�and then we reject the scientific evidence, and then we reject the evidence of personal testimony and compelling solutions to problems we know we have, we are on extremely weak ground.

In conclusion, for anyone who may still be unconvinced that absolutes are entailed by our very necessity of living according to our nature, I quote the British philosopher C.E.M. Joad:

*****

To conclude part A, I will summarize its findings. In addition to the Actualities, there exist the following preconditions of possibility (with the Actualities they imply in parentheses):

1) God [personal or impersonal] (Beauty, Logic)

2) Personal God (Morality, Rationality, Freedom, Love, Science, Agreement on Rationes, Knowledge of Supernatural Correlative Concepts, Religious needs, Human transcendence, Purpose, Goodness, Existence better than non-existence, Art)

3) Soul/Immaterial Mind (Rationality, Enduring self, Libertarian freedom, Science)

4) Human transcendence (Human Transcendence, Morality, Love, Freedom, Art,

Consciousness, Rationality, Fear of non-being, Paradox of human nature )

5) Immortality (Human fear of non-being)

6) Fall (Paradox of human nature)

7) Morality (Morality, Paradox of human nature, Existence better than non-existence)

8) Persons (Human transcendence, Rationality, Art, Love, Libertarian Freedom)

9) Goodness (Existence better than non-existence)

10) Libertarian freedom and responsibility (Love, Morality, Paradox of human nature, Genuine options)

11) Subject-Object Distinction (Logic, Rationality, Enduring self, Science)

12) Regularity (Regularity, Science)

13) Objective, changeless truth (Truth, Science)

14) External world (External world, Science)

15) Causation (Science)

2) not-Postmodernism (Morality, Truth, External world, Unlivability Falsification Theorem, Enduring self, Agreement on rationes)

3) not-Monism (Morality, Enduring self, Persons, Morality/ Creation ex-nihilo, Love, Altruism, Purpose, Agreement about rationes, Subject-object distinction)

4) not-Pyrronhism (all the Actualities)

5) not-Pessimism/Buddhism (Paradox of human nature, Goodness, Existence better than non-existence)

6) not-Optimism (Paradox of human nature)

7) not-Solipsism (Other minds, External world)

8) not-Prometheanism (Unlivability Falsification Theorem, Paradox of human personalism)

These results are extremely significant!

Now that we have argued the reasonability of (and indeed the necessity of believing in) the existence of a personal God, human transcendence, immortality, and a Fall, as well as the reasonability of (and indeed the necessity of believing in) rejecting materialism, monism, pyronnhism, pessimism, optimism, solipsism, and prometheanism through actualities and preconditions of possibility, we will procede to consider all the genuine problems (what William James calls genuine options) upon which humans must decide. The purpose of considering the genuine options after establishing the reasonability of God�s existence is to further the project of deciding where to stake one�s faith on all the forced options we will encounter in life. Because we are assuming the universe is rational (if we could not accept this, there would be no reason to read this apologetic), we trust that the consideration of the individual genuine options will lead us to a coherent worldview in which the solutions to the various problems will be interrelated. So, we are here beginning a second major converging argument, though this argument assumes from Part A the existence of a personal God and human transcendence in order to formulate the Negative Criterion of Human Flourishing, which will be the tool with which we address the problems. We reasonably expect not only that the workable solutions to all genuine human problems will converge on a single truth (i.e. consistent, livable belief set), but that they will converge on the same true beliefs on which the Actualities converged. Now, what are the genuine problems?

1. Problem of God�s Existence

2. Problem of God�s Nature

3. Problem of Creation

4. Problem of Evil

5. Problem of Soteriology

6. Problem of Special Revelation Claims

7. Problem of Science

8. Problem of Ethics

9. Problem of Meaning (�Problem of the One and the Many�)

10. Problem of Love, Marriage, and Sex

11. Problem of Purpose (Philosophy of History; Problem of Teleology)

12. Problem of Epistemology/Verification

13. Problem of Death

14. Problem of Truth�how or can we establish a rational view of the universe?

15. Problem of Supernatural and Miracles

16. Problem of Human Nature

17. Problem of Work

18. Problem of Matter and Spirit/ Nature and Grace

19. Problem of Individual Reform

20. Problem of Social Reform (modern determinisms tell us we can�t change, but we can! They relieve us of responsibility, but deprive us of hope)

20. Problem of Aesthetics

21. Problem of the Environment/Ecology (Human-Nature Relationship)

22. Problem of Society

22. Problem of Judgment/Tolerance

23. Problem of War/Conflict

24. Problem of Freedom

25. Problem of Language

-----

26. Problem of Creation

27. Problem of Parenting (forgiving and just, Just-mean, fluff-forgiving)

28. Problem of Hope

I think this list of genuine problems is fairly exhaustive, and is sufficient for constructing a coherent worldview relevant to all our major needs. If anyone objects to the genuineness of these problems, I urge him to read carefully through the analyses of them, for in the analyses, we will draw out the implications for living from the theories which have been proposed to solve these problems. I am confident that reading these implications will make the reader clearly aware of just how live, forced, and momentous these problems are for living life. In this process, the reader may also very likely become aware of how many of his unquestioned and unconscious assumptions are built around answers to these problems, a further indication of just how genuine these problems are. One final reminder: on every problem agnosticism is an unlisted theoretical possibility, but one which we have rejected on the grounds that these problems are all genuine options, i.e. problems for which no decision is either itself a decision or impossible under the actual conditions of human life. We will continue to entertain materialism as a legitimate contender for the various problems, though we have already refuted it, trusting that its falseness will manifest itself even more clearly through its consistent failure to effectively address all the important questions of life.

For the purposes of analyzing the genuine options, we will introduce a new term for the Unlivability Falsification Theorem combined with specific moral and aesthetic content now justified on the basis of the proven actualities and on the refutation of materialism. We would have placed it among the actualities earlier except that it would have been indefensible then without having secured the actuality of objective morality and the existence of God. According to the Criterion of Human Flourishing, the right belief will lead to the most fruitful, flourishing human life, and negatively, a belief which leads away from human flourishing cannot be true. By human flourishing, I have in mind the highest human good, Aristotle�s eudemonia; I am not speaking of pragmatic expediency such as �what beliefs will enable me to make the most money, or to live the most hedonistic lifestyle?� Rather, I have in mind the best possible human life, the kind of flourishing one recognizes in another and cannot help but wish his own life were similar. The Criterion of Human Flourishing takes the broadest possible spectrum of data into consideration in determining what view �fits every part of life best and combines with the collectivity of experience�s demands, nothing being omitted� (Pragmatism 38).

What is the explicit content of the Criterion of Human Flourishing? Human flourishing means a state of increasing love and peace. It means progress towards the elimination of evil and suffering and sickness. It means high cultural achievements in such areas as literature, philosophy, music, painting, sculpture, architecture, science, medicine, and technology. It means widespread moral benevolence, integrity, courtesy, and kindness, a society where one�s fellows are trustworthy, respectable, unselfish, and helpful. It means safety and an absence of crime. It means social order and social justice. It means families together and sacrificing for each other. It means wisdom, a state in which careful, thoughtful decisions are made. It means thrift and productivity. It means a collective unity of high-character individuals who bravely defend their civilization. It means a general state of happiness or contentment, without complacence, though. Some common enemies of human flourishing are fatalism and authoritarianism.

I am convinced that this criterion is the basis for most human reasoning on important religio-philosophical matters. We change our beliefs when we encounter circumstances in life when our beliefs are leading us away from human flourishing, leading us to miss out on some definite good in life that we would like to have or experience. William James observes,

For example, some of the most convincing arguments against Christianity are built upon events such as the Crusades and the Inquisition and the witch hunts, all committed in the name of religion. It is argued that any religion which leads to these type of events simply cannot be true. I consider this a serious argument, because it is built on the logic of the best criterion we have. (Note: But once we postulate that criterion as actual, in order to use it against Christianity, our system of beliefs must support that actuality by including its conditions of possibility. The atheist uses this criterion against the Christian, but without a God and humanity in God�s image in his system, the very Criterion of Human Flourishing is unjustifiable.)

It should be apparent that history will provide much important data for the use of the Criterion of Human Flourishing. History is important because �differences make a difference,� i.e. differences in beliefs do lead to different states of the world. The civilizations of Asia and Europe and Oceania and Africa are very different from each other. We should take this information into consideration in considering belief systems. The materialist will jump in here to object that ideas do not cause material conditions, but are a product of them. To this, we reply: Materialism is an idea and it is not vindicated by assuming it. As things stand, we have a number of ideal or hypothetical explanations of the world, one of which is materialism (though the ideational content of materialism is the repudiation of idealism). In evaluating the truth of all of these ideas, our looking to history will quickly avail us of important data. For example, we can ask, �In the historical periods and places where materialism has been the dominant hypothesis, how has humanity fared? Has humanity flourished or decayed?� According to Marx, for example, the material conditions of his time made it possible for him to discern the movements of history, and once those movements were understood, humanity was to progress rapidly into a period of unprecedented peace, goodwill, and cooperation under socialism and communism. Now if the materialist hypothesis is the true one, we can expect that in these places and periods of truth, humanity will have flourished, while in all other places and periods, humanity will have comparatively withered. Of course, interpreting historical causal relationships is tricky, but we will leave that question to the specific arguments made.

As with the Unlivability Falsification Theorem, we use the Falsification Criterion of Human Flourishing to falsify rather than to positively identify true solutions to the genuine problems. The process is threefold: 1) Identify logically possible solutions and group them according to basic assumptions; 2) Examine the logical consequences of each of the major solutions or assumption groups to see if they can be falsified by leading away from human flourishing (look also to personal experience and history for evidence of flourishing or unflourishing consequences); 3) Eliminate all solutions or assumption groups which can be falsified by the Falsification Criterion of Human Flourishing; 4) Examine the remaining, unfalsified solution(s) for affirmed solutions and confirm them as truth by elimination. The fourth step requires more explanation. If a broad enough experience base is used, all the false theories can be eliminated including those which are false but may lead to apparent short-term human flourishing. If ever more than one solution remains unfalsified and the solutions are incompatible, the experience used for evaluation must not have been broad enough to falsify those false solutions which lead to limited, short-term flourishing. There are three types of solutions: 1) False solutions which detract from human flourishing; 2) True solutions which lead to human flourishing; 3) Delusionary solutions which lead to human flourishing (for a time at least). The third type of solutions is clearly the troublesome one for our method. But, if only the experience base is large enough, only one unfalsified solution will be left. In practice, most theories can be falsified by unflourishing logical implications and experience is not even necessary, so the theoretical possibility of type 3 solutions is exaggerated, as we will soon see. So by process of elimination, when only one livable option remains, it can be confidently claimed as truth. Because it is unfalsified, it is confirmed, and because it positively leads to human flourishing, it is affirmed. Thus, the total process can be described as the falsification-elimination/ affirmation-confirmation method. Our resulting truth confidence can be explained like this: This solution leads to human flourishing and all the other possible solutions do not. Human flourishing is a definite positive and negative criterion for truth, since a personal God a human transcendence exist. Therefore, I wager confidently (but without certainty) that this one solution is true. Remember that not wagering is not an option!

The particular values of the Criterion of Human Flourishing will no doubt be unconvincing to the relativist. However, I will make my defense again: these characteristics of human flourishing are related to human needs. If the relativist rejects these claims, I challenge him to try to live with any others. For example, a major part of human flourishing as I have defined it is community togetherness, based on the conviction people need each other and that �man is a political animal� (Aristotle). Though there is nothing necessary theoretically in this proposition, I know few people who would doubt that it is necessary nonetheless, an intrinsic part of the human condition. How do they know? From experience and from history. As is the case throughout this inquiry, the reader�s experience is constantly called in to judge of the truth of my argument.

Many will certainly object that the Criterion of Human Flourishing is wishful thinking, and that our speaking of pragmatically-beneficial criteria rather than deductive reason may give us convenience but not truth. For example, an atheist might tell me, �Yes, it would be nice and beneficial for us to believe something that makes life a little nicer, but that is no guarantee that these beliefs are true; that�s just wishful thinking.� In reply, I argue that the objector has mistaken my method for the pragmatists� method. I appeal to my earlier argument that the denial of the Criterion of Human Flourishing, as with the denial of the other actualities, would be more absurd than the affirmation of it. In fact the denial of the Criterion of Human Flourishing cannot be consistently lived out and falls to the Unlivability Falsification Theorem. To repeat, my method moves forward through the elimination of unlivable hypotheses, which by their unlivability, are self-evidently counter to truth (since truth is correspondence of theory with reality, a theory which cannot be lived does not correspond to reality, i.e. it is false).

An easily-foreseeable materialist objection is that there is no reason but selfishness and species-chauvinism to make the criterion specifically human flourishing. While it is impossible to live out the denial of the Criterion of Human Flourishing as humans, it is still possible to object that this impossibility is better explained by natural selection than by the Criterion of Human Flourishing. In other words, of course humans have the criterion of human flourishing and cows have the criterion of bovine flourishing, etc. This is a significant objection, since it calls into question the truth of the Criterion of Human Flourishing. However, since the Criterion of Human Flourishing involves many matters of refinement and aesthetics and morals which are unrelated to survival of the species or natural selection. And, since we have defended earlier the uniqueness of the human species and the actuality of the true, the good, and the beautiful, this objection is not as strong as it first appeared. Even many secular humanists recognize that humans are the only personal, self-conscious creatures so far as we know in all the universe, and procede to utilize the Criterion of Human Flourishing to speak of their goals of human progress.

Now it is true that there are and have been civilizations which did not follow the particular values specified by the Criterion of Human Flourishing. Yet they never seem to last very long�precisely because they do not aim at human flourishing. Just because the criterion was not as is not always followed is no reason to believe it is not part of the intrinsic human reality. After all, it is self-evident than knowledge of a good very often does not entail the doing of that good. It would be far more absurd to suppose the Criterion of Human Flourishing is insignificant and relative while it has directed human affairs and ambitions for as long as recorded history than it would be to suppose the Criterion of Human Flourishing is a basic part of reality which individuals and societies often do not follow and against which they sometimes even rebel. As I mentioned earlier, the Criterion of Human Flourishing involves the best possible human life, on both the individual and social level, and is the kind of flourishing one recognizes in another and cannot help but wish his own life were similar.

Another important objection is this: What is the difference between the Criterion of Human Flourishing and Millian Utilitarianism? Indeed, they are quite close in many respects. While I use the falsification-elimination method in conjunction with the Falsification Criterion of Human Flourishing, Mill writes, �Actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to he reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure� (Mill 157). Mill summarized Utilitarianism as follows: �pleasure, and freedom from pain, are the only things desirable as ends; and that all desirable things . . . are desirable either for the pleasure inherent in themselves, or as means to the promotion of pleasure and the prevention of pain� (158). Mill, as I have, carefully defended himself against the objection that he advocated merely hedonistic expediency. Mill identifies intellect, feelings, and imagination as qualitatively higher pleasures, and personal affections (unselfish relationships) and knowledge as the primary sources of satisfaction in life. In a famous passage, Mill explains,

Thus, when Mill sees maximized pleasure for all people as the only end-in-itself, he is not speaking of mass orgies, but quite the opposite: a well-ordered society which gives all its members the opportunity to enjoy the higher pleasures of friendship, knowledge, and virtue. Why should some pleasures be higher than others? Mill answers, Because everyone who has experience both, prefers those we call the higher. Mill believes the application of human care and effort toward eliminating poverty, disease, and vicissitudes of fortune are part of the progressive, flourishing society.

Here, then, are the similarities:

1) Both Mill and I appeal to a consequentialist criterion.

2) Mill�s highest pleasures and my characteristics of human flourishing are similar: knowledge; science; fighting disease, suffering, and poverty; altruism; relationships.

�And here are the differences:

1) Mill�s is an ethical theory; mine is a systematic method of identifying truth. One can read into Mill�s statement the falsification-elimination /affirmation-confirmation method. However, because Mill does not formulate a more sophisticated method, his criteria as it stands is inadequate to identify truth, only expediencies. From all appearances, Mill is saying the same thing as the Pragmatists: whatever works is �true,� i.e. expedient.

2) My consequentialism is moderated by concern for the individual, while Mill�s is not. Mill admits this: �the danger is, not that [the Happiness morality] should be insufficient, but that it should be so excessive as to interfere unduly with human freedom and individuality� (Mill 190). Without more adequate controls, Machiavelli�s ends always justifying means is an extreme danger. To be fair, Mill rightly states that if one�s view is large enough, consequentialism is safe; for example, an expedient lie is not acceptable because it will decrease the mutual reliability and trust between humans, which in the longest run is inexpedient. But is this adequate?

3) Utilitarianism seeks no higher justification for its greatest happiness principle, while Transcendental Pragmatism�s Criterion of Human Flourishing is grounded in the existence of a personal God, human transcendence, and objective morality as logically prior. Mill states, �No reason can be given why the general happiness is desirable, except that each person, so far as he believes it to be attainable, desires his own happiness. This, however, being a fact, we have not only all the proof which the case admits of, but all it is possible to require, that happiness is a good� (Mill 192-3). However, it is certainly possible to require (and to provide) more evidence that happiness is a good; we have already done both. Mill expects us to accept for no good reason that human flourishing is intrinsically any better than caterpillar flourishing and that what humans desire is the universe�s true teleology. Like James� Pragmatism, this is only the expediency of human desires; it can stake no claim to �the good.�

4) Mill offers no reason why his �higher pleasures� are higher except that well-informed humans almost always chose them over other pleasures. However, this bears the same problem observed in difference #3: Why believe there is anything special about humans? Why should their mere preferences be taken as the basis for an objective qualitative distinction between lower and higher pleasures? Mill can offer no answers, because his system is metaphysically ungrounded.

5) Utilitarianism is incomplete as a system, for it lacks motivation force and a metaphysical undergirding. Mill suggests that utilitarianism can attach itself to Christian ethics, for example, to provide its motive power. In contrast, Transcendental Pragmatism offers internal motivation force, precisely on the strength of its metaphysical undergirding. While Mill counts it a strength that Utilitarianism is independent of God and therefore can appeal to theists and atheists alike, in fact this lack of metaphysical grounding is his greatest weakness.

6) Mill�s morals are derived from the human good and their instrumentality toward that end, while Transcendental Pragmatism accepts objective morals as the basis for the human good. This is all the difference between the Pragmatist�s �It�s true because it works� and the Transcendental Pragmatist�s �It works because it�s true�; only in this case, we are looking at the Utilitarian�s �It�s moral because it works� verses the Transcendental Pragmatist�s �It works because it�s moral.� Nowhere is this more transparent than in Mill�s dismissal of conscience as something moldable to any set of moral beliefs, and his analysis of virtue, which he says is only desirable as an end in itself because over time its crucial association with pleasurable consequences for the most people has been forgotten. In contrast, Transcendental Pragmatism offers real virtue and a consequentalism moderated by deontology, which prevents good ends from ever justifying bad means.

We will have more to say about Utilitarianism once we get to the Problem of ethics.

While these objections have been refuted, it is instructive to point out that the force of all of these objections lies precisely in the metaphysical materialistic presuppositions of most contemporary people. The materialist is continually impressed by the objection that any theory which promises something good for humans must be wish-fulfillment. As we observed earlier, this objection is no more logical than the view that human needs and desires may reflect something real about human beings and about reality. The careful thinker, metaphysically agnostic as he sifts arguments, will not be any unduly or preferentially impressed by the materialists� objection, though he will certainly consider it. At this point in our inquiry, though, we have already vindicated the God hypothesis by refuting materialism, so the force of all of these objections ought to be minimal. If the supernatural exists, along with meaning and purpose, and if humans are the distinctive creatures in the universe (all actualities we have defended and vindicated), it would be expected that a concrete criterion of meaningful action such as the Criterion of Human Flourishing exist and be known by or accessible to people.

If the skeptical reader still thinks the relativity of this criterion is less absurd than its actuality as a legitimate means of adjudicating genuine options; if he cannot relate to the innate ability to recognize human flourishing when in contact with it, he will need to find another criterion. Let him remember, too, that he cannot escape wagering in the genuine options, and that he cannot help but use the Criterion of Human Flourishing, and that he has no better criteria to go on. We wish him well on his impossible task! He should consider the arguments of the pragmatists if he thinks he has a better criterion. According to Pierce,

Pierce is explaining the pragmatists� criterion of meaning. If the belief in question does not affect our actions in any way, then that belief has no reality and is meaningless to us. Under this criterion, both spiritualist and materialist hypotheses are included as meaningful, since both entail actions. However, as James observes, �It is astonishing how many philosophical disputes collapse into insignificance the moment you subject them to this simple test of tracing a concrete consequence� (Pragmatism 27). If the skeptic expects to find what it real and what is meaningful by staying completely on the theoretical plain, he cannot succeed and will only get entangled by sophistry. James concludes, �The whole function of philosophy ought to be to find out what definitive difference it will make to you and me, at definite instants of our life, if this world-formula or that world-formula be the true one� (Pragmatism 27). This is precisely the content of Part B of this inquiry. If the skeptic thinks he has a better or more immediately relevant criterion for truth than the Criterion of Human Flourishing, let him try to use it, and see what happens. I am confident that this very process will affirm the criterion for him when he sees the failure of his criterion.

My contention is that the Criterion of Human Flourishing is not unknown to any of us, but part of our basic constitution as humans. This is obviously a spiritualist claim; the materialist holds that �there is nothing in the intellect that was not first in the senses.� But, this innateness of this criterion is the precondition of possibility for its actuality. (It might also be that some supernatural force is responsible for constantly making human minds aware of the criterion even though it is not innate; if this is true, it would mean practically the same thing.) Another precondition of possibility is the existence of a supernatural power to put the innate idea in the minds of all people. It is exceptional difficult to explain this phenomenon any other way. One possible alternative would be to say that the Criterion of Human Flourishing is a judgment made from analysis of the experiences of oneself and others. However, this explanation fails because it still requires as a precondition of possibility the innate ability to recognize by some criteria the true, the good, and the beautiful. Otherwise no human mind (much less all human minds!) could find no way to connect and unite particular observations out of the continuous barrage of sense data in order to formulate the criterion. Also as a consequence of this condition of possibility, materialism and empiricism are once again repudiated.

This problem we have already solved in part A, but another proof via a secondary approach will increase our confidence on this problem, probably the most important of them all. There are essentially three options here, since agnosticism is not an option:

a. God exists (Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Idealism).

b. God does not exist (Atheism, Materialism, Marxism).

c. God is beyond existence (Mysticism, Neo-orthodoxy).

What are the living consequences of the first option, theism?

William James in Pragmatism notes the vastly different implications of atheism and theism in the living of one�s life. Theism entails for the believer confidence in the meaning, purpose, significance, and morality of himself and the world. As a result, the theist has hope to sustain him at least in his earthly life and he has �permanent warrant for [his] more ideal interests� (Pragmatism 50). The hope and beatitude of theism are seen in the final verse of Henry Van Dyke�s Hymn to Joy:

Theism is affirmed by the Criterion of Human Flourishing; to be confirmed, though, it must be the only livable solution to the Problem of God�s existence.

What are the living consequences of belief in the second option, atheism?

According to William James, atheism means an absence of meaning, purpose, significance, and morality. Lacking all these things, the atheist (if aware of his plight) despairs even of his life. He lacks hope and any warrant at all for any but the most selfish of his interests. James observes, �This utter final wreck and tragedy is of the essence of scientific materialism as at present understood� (Pragmatism 50). A few quotes will help the reader grasp the despair entailed by consistent, well-understood atheism.

No one who has honestly wrestled with the situation or tried to understand the despair of an atheistic worldview can fail to feel the force of these quotes. Of course there are supposed �playful nihilists,� those who, like Richard Rorty, consider the nihilistic age full of optimistic possibility. Like the early Nietzsche, they have misunderstood; they have failed to grasp the existential stakes of the situation, i.e. that life is utterly meaningless without God. Atheism cannot be true; it is falsified and eliminated by the Criterion of Human Flourishing.

Now, we will look further into the third option. The third option was presented by Karl Barth, Karl Jung, and Paul Tillich, among others. They claim that existence is not a category that can properly be applied to God at all. God is beyond existence and non-existence; we should not try to capture the vitality and mystery of the universe with a human idea or decision, but rather affirm the holiness and mystical wonder of the universe. Tillich argues that to say God exists is to say that God is a thing, i.e. an idol, something forbidden by the first commandment. Any human idea of God is necessarily false, is necessarily an idol, even when dressed in such theological wrappings as �omnipotent� or �unknowable.� What are the living consequences of belief in a God beyond existence? The main implication is that God�s nature is completely unknowable, so unknowable that Tillich doesn�t even think the word �unknowable� obscures it. God is radically uncategorizable. The living implications of this view are traced out and used to falsify and eliminate this option as a possible solution to the Problem of God�s Existence as part of Problem #2, the Problem of God�s Nature. Refer to this section and return here when finished. In summary, if God is unknowable, he might as well be dead to us�except that it gives validation to our mystical feelings, which is not enough. This option is falsified and eliminated.

So, on the basis of the Criterion of Human Flourishing, theism is affirmed, atheism is falsified, and mysticism is falsified. Therefore, theism, as the only affirmed possibility, is therefore confirmed. Since there are only three options, theism, atheism, and mysticism, and we have disproven the latter two, we have indirectly proven the first. Thus, needing to make a decision about God�s existence, we are fully justified rationally in accepting theism, and would be acting irrationally to believe in atheism or mysticism.

There are a number of logically possible answers to this problem, which attempts to specify God�s personal/impersonal nature and his moral nature:

b. Christianity

*Personal = Mind and Will

Now here is a more detailed explanation of the positions and an analysis of the basic options using the Criterion of Human Flourishing:

According to Dualists, God is good and finite, but opposed by a evil force/being equally or very nearly equally strong. This view stands or falls on its solution to the Problem of Evil. Refer to the section on the Problem of Evil for the falsification of Finitism.

b1. Catholicism/Orthodoxy/Arminianism. We must be careful here to distinguish the orthodoxy of Catholic, Protestant, and Eastern Orthodox Christianity (conservatives) from modernizing theological movements within Christianity such as Christian Liberalism, Process Theology, Neo-orthodoxy, and Liberation Theology (liberals); these movements have adopted significantly different views of God�s nature. Then, we must also divide the conservative group into Calvinism and Arminianism, for these two Christian systems describe radically different Gods. I will use the term Arminianism (a Protestant term) to designate the open view of God�s sovereignty (that God intervenes at times in active control of history to guide it by blessing, judgment, and special revelation, honoring human libertarian free will), which is shared by much of Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, in contrast to the closed view of God�s sovereignty (that God actively controls all events), which is widespread in Protestantism, but has been taught by some Catholics as well.

Like Jews, orthodox Christians refer to Exodus 34:6-7 as a key description of God�s nature: �The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion, and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation.� The Bible does not teach that God holds grandchildren guilty for their grandparents� sins; it refers to the long-range consequences of sin which extend often to the third and forth generation. The Christian God is gracious, loving, and forgiving, but unwilling to let the unrepentant escape judgment; this is the consistent description of God throughout both the Hebrew scriptures and the New Testament. The Christian God differs only from the Hebrew God only in that Christians believe that since Christ, God dwells in the hearts of believers through his Spirit as a fulfillment of Joel 2:28-30 and Ezekiel 36:26-27 (prophecies of the Hebrew prophets).

So, what are the living implications of a belief in the Arminian Christian God?

1) Arminianism provides peace in light of God�s open sovereignty, coupled with reformism in light of God�s historic purposes of eliminating evil and redeeming mankind. Both of these are necessary for human flourishing:

2) Arminianism provides an excellent solution to the Problem of Evil by way of the Free Will Defense and belief in libertarian free will. An adequate answer to the Problem of Evil is necessary for human flourishing and fighting evil.

3) Arminianism provides intelligible knowledge of God�s good nature and thus a basis for reasonable trust in God, the necessary grounds for a flourishing relationship with God.

4) Arminianism provides a philosophy of history that encourages willful human activity

5) Arminianism offers a secure basis for significant moral freedom and responsibility, which are necessary for human flourishing.

6) Arminians, by teaching that morally God is both forgiving to the repentant and just to the unrepentant, avoid the living implications of either a killjoy God or a fluff God. Quite naturally, people tend to conform their nature to the nature they believe God possesses, thus becoming killjoys or fluffy flakes themselves. Arminians can be merry and joyful without feeling the least guilt (unlike Puritans) and also take sin and evil very seriously (unlike some evangelicals). Neither extreme leads to human flourishing.

7) Arminians, by teaching that God receives the greatest glory precisely when humans�the crown of his creation�are most satisfied in God and his gifts, again avoid the extremes of a fluff God that exists to serve humans (some evangelicals) and an unpredictable, arbitrary God to whom human pleasure, life, and happiness must constantly be sacrificed. Neither extreme leads to human flourishing.

8) Arminianism avoids the extremes of either thoroughgoing transcendence (deism) and thoroughgoing immanence (pantheism) by claiming that God is transcendent in his creation of the world ex nihilo, and immanent in his open sovereignty, his sustenance of the world and history, and his presence in the hearts of Christians. Because he is transcendent, evil had a beginning and may have an end, and moreover, his sovereignty provides grounds for hope that God will eliminate evil and guide history beneficently. Because he is immanent, he can meet our religious needs and his mastery over history has human relevance (Carnell xx). Deism yields an Absolute beyond human experience, beyond good and evil, who does not communicate with humans or reveal himself to them in any way besides through nature. Deism fails to meet religious needs because it provides no heavenly Father, and presents a God for the most part irrelevant to human concern. Pantheism undercuts personalism, morality, purpose, hope, free will, activity, and love.

Thus, Arminian Christianity has been affirmed as a possible solution to the Problem of God�s nature; it remains to be seen whether it will be the only unfalsified solution, and be thereby confirmed.

b2. Calvinism/Augustinianism. Calvin�s teachings, which mirrored those of the late Augustine, are summarized in the �Five Points of Calvinism�:

1) Total Depravity: humans are unable to respond to God without His initiative;

2) Unconditional Election: God elects according to His good pleasure;

3) Limited Atonement: Christ died for the elect only;

4) Irresistible Grace: God irresistibly draws the elect to Christ and salvation;

5) Perseverance of the Saints: the elect cannot lose their salvation (Boa 65).

The key differences between Calvinism and Arminianism are as follows:

1. Calvinism is built on a thoroughgoing commitment to God�s omnipotence: God can do whatever he wants. As a logical consequence, God cannot be limited by a constant nature (see #2) and God cannot give humans independent, libertarian free will (see #3 and #4).

2. Calvinism teaches that God defines the good by his will, not that God defines the good by his nature. Thus, the Arminian Christian can say �God is good� and �God cannot violate his nature,� while the Calvinist can only say �God is what God defines as good� or �the good is what God does.�

3. Calvinism teaches that God doubly-predestines (i.e. predetermines the salvation of the elect and the damnation of the reprobate by arbitrary will). Arminianism teaches that God predestines according to his foreknowledge, but that he violates no free human will he has created.

4. Calvinism teaches compatibalism, i.e. that God�s preordination and direct willing of every event and human free will are both mysteriously true; Arminianism teaches Libertarian free will, a type of incompatibalism, i.e. that determinism and free will cannot both be true, which holds that humans possess undetermined free willful choice.

5. Calvinism holds that God wills every good human action, since humans are utterly and totally depraved. Arminians agree that humans are fallen, so humans cannot live nearly sinless lives; however, humans are capable of doing much good of their own free will.

6. Because of total depravity and irresistible grace, Calvinism requires that we come to accept Christianity only by scandalous revelation, which we accept as God�s Word. According to Luther�s doctrine of monergistic regeneration, �the faith which receives Christ for justification is itself the free gift of a sovereign God, bestowed by spiritual regeneration in the act of effectual calling� (Packer �Introduction� in Luther 58). Arminianism teaches that humans can use their own criteria and make their own decisions about becoming Christians (the criteria are implanted by God, of course).

Now, what are the living consequences of belief in Calvinism?

1. As a result of #2, God�s and humans� understanding of �good� are different. So, God�s moral nature is unintelligible. This makes any relationship with God extremely impractical. One cannot trust God, but only fear him�and that with a morbid kind of fear, not a respectful fear. If the good is what God arbitrarily does, then there is no reason to trust God, for trust is based on predictability and consistent character, not arbitrary will. Also, God does not really love you; he arbitrarily chooses to damn you or to save you, and this for his own glory. Living like this is not human flourishing!

2. Because God�s and humans� understanding of �good� are different, there is also no possible answer to the Problem of Evil. Thus, there is no rational reason to believe God is good in any meaningful sense. Thus, as E.J. Carnell explains, �The universe, with all of the evil in it is the best possible of all worlds, for the very reason that God, the standard of good, has called it good. . . . The ten commandments are good and God�s damning . . . is good, solely and only because God approves of such acts� (Carnell 300, 312). God might call the universe xcjuty, too, but since neither Calvinist good nor xcjuty mean anything to me, he might as well call it one as the other. As John Stuart Mill wrote,

Moreover, Calvinist compatibalism means that God could have created humans free without the possibility of evil; thus God is immediately responsible for evil. The free will defense, the classic Christian answer to the Problem of Evil, is nullified by compatibalism.

The Problem of Evil is a very existential problem. Different understandings of God�s nature yield different answers to the Problem of Evil, which will be either adequate or inadequate to meet humans� existential needs as they encounter evil in their lives. Can they trust a God who willfully killed their son and willfully brought cancer and pestilence and famine into the world in order that he might be most glorified? Because Calvinism cannot answer the Problem of Evil, it fails the Criterion of Human Flourishing.

3. As a result of #1, in order to make God everything, Calvinism makes humans nothing. Augustine writes, �You are so high among the highest, and I am so low among the lowest, a mean thing� (Confessions, 138). Carnell writes, �there are two orders of being included in this universe: Almighty God and dust� (Carnell 310). This kind of attitude can quickly lead to the devaluation of human life, including one�s own life. This is not human flourishing!

4. Because God�s grace is operative in good works, and because humans are totally depraved, all human good is nullified. Thus, a consistent believer in Calvinism will live a with a groveling, self-flagellating, morbid attitude toward oneself and toward life. The classic case is Augustine, who changed his views on free will late in his life; the difference in his self-concept between say, On Free Choice of the Will and Confessions, is truly striking. Augustine, rather than confidently awaiting death as a noble Christian, locked himself in his cell and sung penitential songs the last few days of his life. This is not human flourishing!

5. Because Calvinism is so stark and ascetic, it deprives humans of much joy they would otherwise be able to experience. This is not human flourishing!

6. Calvinist compatibalism is an attempt to preserve human responsibility. However, in real life, it is impossible to believe, even as a mystery, that God predetermines and that humans have free will and are responsible. To really believe God is actively sovereign over every event makes a sincere, existential belief in human responsibility dubious. This easy acceptance of contradictions also leads to irrational living. Most importantly, Calvinist compatibalism has led to the Wesleyan Holiness movement. Wesley taught that righteousness was not a gradual process of Christians being transformed as they worked out godly living, but an instantaneous gift of God, just like the gift of salvation. This follows very easily from the Calvinist doctrines of total depravity and thoroughgoing omnipotence. As a result of this teaching about the �second grace,� the Keswick movement and Holiness movements developed, bearing such watchwords and hymn lyrics as �Let go and let God,� �Don�t strive; just abide,� �None of self and all of Thee,� �Oh to be nothing,� �Take my will and make it thine; It shall be no longer mine.� The idea is that total surrender of one�s will to God makes one an available vessel for God to work through, but only if you empty yourself completely. This leads to a renunciation of free will, incompetence, intellectual irresponsibility, and frustration when the instant sanctification never comes. The Holiness movement was the seedbed for the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements of the twentieth century, which offer further evidence of the unfruitful results of believing in a second grace. Thus, Calvinism again fails the Criterion of Human Flourishing.

7. If Calvinism does not lead to incompetence, it may do worse: lead to apathy and fatalism. While Calvinists deny this charge, there is no logical reason why their beliefs do not lead to fatalism. According to the Calvinist, even though evil is present because it is decreed by God and even though everything that happens is determined by God, Christians are to obey God�s command to fight evil. Carnell explains,

This is much easier said than done in real life where legitimate motive power is required to do anything. If God does and will do everything, why bother doing anything? The fact that he chooses to act by using human agents is trivial because whatever he wants will happen whether I act or not, so there is no motive power. Fatalism is not human flourishing!

8. As a result of #6, no one should rightly believe Calvinism unless he or she is somehow unable to resist it. Also, Calvinism offers no more reason to think that Christianity is God�s Word than any scandalous, contradictory message. Historically, it has lead to Neo-orthodoxy, a religion started by a liberal Calvinist, Karl Barth. Barth concluded that God is so �wholly other� that nothing can be known about him and that we can only know God �as the One we cannot know.� With no rational basis to accept the Bible as literally authoritative, Barth concluded that the Bible only contained the revelation of God. The meaning of Christianity for Barth was that nothing can be known at all; even beliefs are works by which we seek to domesticate the unutterable mystery of the universe (Harvey xvi, 132). For Calvin, faith involved learning God�s truth�but truth which is untestible and must be blindly accepted; for Barth, faith is simply to know that one does not know (Harvey xvii). To be a Christian is to be one who accepts the radically ambiguity and rational unknowability of everything. This is the logical conclusion of Calvinism since it gives no rational basis for any particular belief. This irrationality can lead easily to blind acceptance of anything, including Fascism and Nazism. This is not human flourishing!

9. Prayer, like action, becomes meaningless under Calvinism, for when God does everything and has predetermined everything he will do, there is no reason why I should pray. The Calvinists says, �You should pray because God tells you to in the Bible.� But, if this is the only reason, then there are no rational controls for what I can and cannot except as God�s command from the Bible as it is misinterpreted. Moreover, this reason does not sustain prayer in real life. Thus, Calvinism leads its believers into contradictions which cannot be sustained in real life. This is not human flourishing!

10. Finally, since people naturally conform themselves to the nature they believe God has, Calvinists have historically been very stark and Puritanical (the Puritans were Calvinists!) in their behavior. Because they are intent on making God everything and humans nothing, Calvinists have objected stringently to all human pleasures not directed immediately towards God. Calvinists have often forbidden dancing, playing cards, watching movies, and numerous other pleasurable activities. Augustine was an extreme ascetic, feeling guilty for eating the slightest bit of food more than was necessary to stay alive, and for using music in Christian worship, because the pleasure of the music might detract from the contemplation of God. Augustine�s most famous killjoy view was his view that couples should only have sex for the purposes of procreation and even then they should not enjoy it! Such stifling of authentic, unharmful human joys and pleasures is certainly not human flourishing. This point alone probably accounts for most people�s rejection of Calvinism, and unfortunately, for their rejection of all forms of Christianity as well.

So, Calvinism fails the Criterion of Human Flourishing on nine major counts. It has been falsified and eliminated as a possible solution to the Problem of God�s Nature.

Neo-orthodoxy (a.k.a. Christian existentialism) was started by Karl Barth in the 1920�s as a reaction against Christian Liberalism, the modernizing theology that dominated the nineteenth century. It affirmed the Bible as a source of truth along with Orthodoxy, against Christian Liberalism, but held that the Bible contained the revelation rather than was the revelation. According to Neo-orthodox Christians, what is revealed in Christ and in the Bible is justification by faith, viz. that humans need God to orient themselves rightly in the world. Other key Neo-orthodox thinkers include Ebeling, Bultmann, Tillich, and Rahner. Here is a summary of Neo-orthodoxy by Van Harvey:

As seen here, the central premise of Neo-orthodoxy is that God cannot be known, and that true religion consists not in knowing God but in knowing that you cannot know God, that there is an infinite qualitative distinction between God and man. Not only does true religion negate claims to know God, but it negates claims to know anything, for any claims of knowledge are attempts to justify oneself by works, namely beliefs. To exist authentically as a human being is to be justified by faith, i.e. to admit that humans are absolutely unable to address the radical ambiguity and undomesticatable mystery of Being. To be justified by faith, as H.R. Niebuhr wrote, is �to trust in �the Void,� by which he meant that �last shadowy and vague reality, the secret of existence by virtue of which things come into being, are what they are, and pass away� and against which there is no defense. To have faith is to have confidence in this last reality in which we move and have our being. It is to be able to say, �Though it slay us yet we will we trust it�� (Harvey xviii-xix).

What are the living implications of belief in Neo-orthodoxy?

1) Trust in God, the key doctrine of Neo-orthodoxy, is impossible because God is unknowable. Trust requires a personal God, and Neo-orthodoxy cannot guarantee this. In fact, since there is an infinite qualitative distinction between God and man, it is impossible that God would be personal like us. The counterclaim, that God is suprapersonal, also fails, for suprapersonal and impersonal are only two ways of saying the same thing. God can either be accurately known as personal or not. Any system which is built on contradictions makes impossible demands on its believers and cannot lead to human flourishing.

2) Because God is unknowable, Neo-orthodoxy defaults to Pantheism. In practice, it is impossible to distinguish God from nature and natural events; so God must be assumed to be behind them. If God is �that �last shadowy and vague reality, the secret of existence by virtue of which things come into being, are what they are, and pass away� and against which there is no defense,� God is precisely nature. If God is more than nature, he is at least nature, and indistinguishable from nature. When asked to be justified by faith, we are being asked to humbly come into submission to the will of God, i.e. submit to nature. This leads to fatalism, for to resist nature may well be to resist God, and resisting God is to attempt to justify yourself, the cardinal sin. As Camus noted in The Plague, we are left to choose between fighting the plague and thereby fighting God or else accepting the plague and accepting God. Neo-orthodoxy advocates the latter course by its insistence on trusting an unknowable, vague and shadowy reality indistinguishable from nature.

Consider a real life example: your child dies of cancer. Arminian Christianity says that death is wrong, part of natural evil which entered the world through the Fall; God hates all evils and fights it with you. You are rightly indignant and sorrowful; God is, too, but has permitted the consequences of sin to prevail for a time. Calvinist Christianity says that God has done this to achieve glory for himself, and since whatever God does is good, this too is good and you should thank God. Neo-orthodox Christianity says, This happened, and since God is the vague and shadowy Reality, though it slay me, yet I will trust it. The second and third cases are both examples of the fatalism and irrational belief in the goodness of God implicit in Calvinism and its twentieth-century progeny, Neo-orthodoxy. Fatalism and irrationalism do not lead to human flourishing!

3) Neo-orthodoxy provides no answer to the Problem of Evil. As Neo-orthodox theologians admit, trusting an unknowable God is a �leap of faith� against reason, for reason tells us that life is unfair and full of evil. Since we cannot distinguish God from nature, we cannot distinguish good and evil, either. According to Karl Rahner, a Catholic Neo-orthodox theologian, the �scandal of the cross� is to believe God is good against all the evidence. This is supposed to be authentic and profound, but it is foolish, because it is irrational belief in God�s goodness. One might as well trust a mass-murderer against all the evidence; only in this case, God is a more massive mass-murderer than any human being ever was! This is not human flourishing!

4) Since Neo-orthodoxy has as its object an irrational (or at least non-rational) Reality, it opens up the Pandora�s Box of irrational action. Only reason can provide checks against irrational action. Quakers provide many examples of practical problems associated with irrationalism, for their doctrine is very loose and undefined. Farnsworth, a young Quaker preacher, suggested a preaching tour on a diet of only scripture and spring water. Susanna Pearson believed she could raise a drowned man from the dead, and had his body unearthed; despite her prayers and her lying on his body, nothing happened. A constable named Richard Sale �felt moved� to go through Chester barefoot and bare-legged with flowers and weeds in his hands and covered in sackcloth and ashes, believing himself to be a sign. He later �felt moved� to walk through London with a candle to protest worship by candlelight. Blanshard writes, �once the check of common reason is taken away, [non-rational doctrine] may counsel sheer fanaticism� (Carnell 78).

5) Neo-orthodoxy cuts itself loose from the moral teachings of traditional Christianity. It gives no particular call to believe or to do anything; it has �refined itself out of existence� (Carnell xx). Because all human knowledge is inextricably confused and ambiguous, no ethical claim can be considered normative or true. Neo-orthodoxy claims that the human problem is that we try to understand the universe and bring the unutterable mystery of the universe under domestication; the human problem is not a moral problem, but an intellectual problem. In other words, Neo-orthodoxy renounces morality as peripheral; authentic trust in the Void is the goal. Human moral improvement and advancement are not valuable goals in themselves. A good example of this is Roger Lambert, the Barthian theology professor in John Updike�s novel, Roger�s Version. Lambert leaves the ministry and divorces his wife to run off with a woman he is having an affair with, whom he ships off to another state so she won�t hurt his reputation, thinks constantly about sexual intercourse, is a bad father, has another affair with his niece, and has an apathetic and negative attitude toward life. When confronted with moral issues, he says, �Oh please. We don�t need t have our sins redeemed, do we? What sins? A little greed, a little concupiscence? You call those sins, compared with an earthquake, compared with a tidal wave, a plague� (Updike 173). While Lambert is a fictional character, his persona is based on real Barthian professors and every part of his life, especially his moral laxity and apathy are clearly traceable to his Neo-orthodoxy. Whatever the truth is, it must include a central concern for moral improvement and a definite moral code in agreement with the Criterion of Human Flourishing. Neo-orthodoxy includes neither, and is thus falsified.

5) Tillich suggests that our theological conceptions of God and Christologies are symbols which mediate our relationship with the unknowable Ground of Being. When accepted as symbols and not as realities, they pave the way for healthy religion. In practice, however, no one can use the divine Christ as a symbol for worshipping the vague, shadowy Void if they don�t believe Christ was truly divine. Nor can anyone use �God� as a symbol for facilitating �relationship� with the Void if they do not believe �God� exists in the way the word �God� connotes. As Francis Schaeffer notes, this impossibility is overcome by word magic or �semantic mysticism.� Neo-orthodox Christians continue to worship God, not the Void, because they forget that the connotations of the word God and the unconscious belief in them are all that sustain their worship and relationship with the Void. Imagine a church service in which �God� was replaced by �Void� or �Whatever�; no worship could happen. This is not human flourishing!

So, Tillich�s claim that existence is not a category that can be applied to God is the worst form of obscurantism. Belief in God, if it is to mean anything to us beyond an affirmation of our mystical feelings, must include existence as a predicate of God. Moreover, effective, positive belief in God must include the predication of personalism, such that trust in God, relationship with God, and dependence upon God are rationally intelligible. Furthermore, belief in God must include the predicate of good in a rational way that includes an answer to the Problem of Evil. Neo-orthodox Christians have only succeeded in living Neo-orthodoxy to the extent they have relied upon the connotation power of the word �God,� which suggests an existing, personal, good being.

Christian Liberalism was started by Friedrich Schleiermacher, an early nineteenth-century German theologian, who summarized all religion, including Christianity, as the �intuition of the universe� and the �feeling of absolute dependence.� The premises of Christian Liberalism, summarized by Adolf Harnack, are: the fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man, and the value of the individual soul. In practice, Christian Liberalism is almost indistinguishable from secular Humanism. The guiding beliefs are faith in inevitable progress and the goodness of human nature. According to Christian Liberals, Christianity is a dynamic religion which explains how a particular group of people came to experience and conceptualize ultimate reality, so it is not final; God reveals progressively and continuously to people everywhere at all times. So, Christian liberalism reduces logically to religious pluralism, even as the main Protestant denominations which converted to Christian Liberalism are decidedly pluralistic at this time. So, please refer to the section below on religious pluralism, for a discussion of the living consequences of belief in Christian Liberalism.

Liberation Theology stresses God�s social justice concerns from the Old Testament prophets and conceives God as a radical revolutionary eager to overthrow existing social conditions to set up a utopian society. Just how well this conception of God works is dependent upon the soteriology of Liberation Theology; see the Problem of Soteriology for the falsification of the Utopian soteriology and thus the Utopian God as well.

Though nobody would admit to holding the fluff model of God, many people (including many evangelical Christians) in fact do. This model takes the opposite extreme of Calvinism: while Calvinism affirms God�s justice at the expense of his love, the Fluff model affirms his love at the cost of his justice. In this view, God exists only as an expedient to human desires, only to love humans and never to judge them or condemn them, even the unrepentant. This view of God is often advanced in evangelical circles through the doctrine of cheap grace, i.e. that God�s lives people so much, he will forgive all their sins if they just believe in Jesus; then they can do whatever they want. This is a modern form of the early antinomian heresy in the New Testament. Consider Dietrich Bonhoeffer�s evaluation of this view:

Notice that Bonhoeffer traced out the living, historical consequences of cheap grace theology. Before long, Christianity became meaningless, consisting only of a statement of belief that had no effect on life, that in fact became a license for laxity and doing whatever one pleased. Moral laxity is invariably the result of belief in a fluff God. For example, many Protestants in twentieth-century Germany took little or no action to oppose the Holocaust. Many nonreligious people rightly find this view of God as a servant of human desire ridiculous, probably because it leads to moral laxity in its proponents.

As in Christianity, modernizing trends within Judaism have broken off from orthodoxy. Conservative Judaism has the same ethos and philosophical undergirding as Christian Liberalism; see the section on Christian Liberalism for an analysis of these common assumptions. Reform Judaism has the same ethos and philosophical undergirding as Liberation Theology; see the section on Liberation Theology for an analysis of these common assumptions.

The belief in a compassionate, forgiving God who punishes unrepentant sin strictly is in common between orthodox Christianity and orthodox Judaism. There are two major distinctives. First, from the side of Judaism, it appears this God has forgotten Israel. The ancient prophets foretold that a Messiah would come and nothing has happened for over 2000 years. There have been no prophets in that time and even the rabbi interpreters of the Mishnah and Talmud died nearly 2000 years ago. If the Judaic God is a Messiah-sending God, he is not hurrying in sending the Messiah. Second, Christians believe this God incarnated himself in Christ, who was the Messiah, and that God now dwells in the hearts of believers by his Spirit, as the prophets foretold. Christians believe that the rending of the temple curtain recorded in the gospels marked the moment when God�s presence left the temple. In ancient Judaism, God �tabernacled� among his people and his presence was displayed by a cloud over the tabernacle during the day and fire over the tabernacle at night. Even if Christianity is not true, there does seem to be a marked absence of God�s presence among the Jews now.

From a Jewish point of view, Christianity appears to minimize the evil of the world by accepting Christ as the Messiah. The Jewish theologian Martin Buber stated, �The church rests on its faith that the Christ has come, and that this is the redemption which God has bestowed on mankind. We, Israel, are not able to believe this. . . . We know more deeply, more truly, that world history has not been turned upside down to its very foundations�that the world is not redeemed. We sense its unredeemedness.� However, this misunderstands the Christian philosophy of history, which claims that the Messiah will eliminate evil and turn world history upside down when he comes the second time; the first coming was to redeem the world from sin. Thus, both Jews and Christians have eschatological hopes which sustain them in difficult times, but Christians have the confidence that the world�s redemption is already achieved and the coming Reign of God will follow upon the evangelization of the world.

Aside from its weakening from genocide and persecutions, Judaism has weakened internally. The absence of God�s presence seems to make Judaism a more difficult belief system to live with, but it cannot be entirely falsified by the Criterion of Human Flourishing.

The Qur�an is full of predicates for Allah and names of Allah: Most Gracious, Most Merciful, Beneficent, Cherisher and Sustainer of the Worlds, etc. However, according to orthodox Islamic theology, God himself cannot be known, for He has revealed his will, not Himself. Like Calvinists and Neo-orthodox Christians, Muslims believe that God is transcendently Other, that �Allah Akbar,� i.e. God is greater (than, for example, all our ideas of him). A recent Muslim theologian Isma�il al-Faruqi explained,

Because Islam is built on thoroughgoing transcendence and omnipotence of God, just like Calvinism and Neo-orthodoxy, it has many of the same problematic living implications:

1) God is remote and unknowable. Relationship with God is impossible because God cannot even be predicated as personal. Trust in God and love for God are meaningless; fear of God alone makes some sense, but this is a morbid fear rather than a respectful fear.

2) Because God�s will is arbitrary, as in Calvinism, there is no guarantee that one will spend the afterlife in heaven or in hell. Also, because God�s merciful forgiveness is not tied to any objective fact (such as the Atonement in Christianity), there is no way to know if one�s good will outweigh his evil on Judgment Day. So, just as Augustine spent his last days singing penitential songs, Abu Bakr, the morally exemplary Muslim caliph who succeeded Mohammed, told Aisha (Mohammed�s favorite wife) on the day he died, ��O my daughter, this is the day of my release and of obtaining m desert;�if gladness it will be lasting; it sorrow it will never cease�� (Chapman 254). Similarly, Umar stated on his deathbed, ��I am none other than as a drowning man who sees the possibility of escape with life, and hopeth for it, but feareth he may die and lose it, and so plungeth about with hands and feet. More desperate than the drowning man is he who at the sight of heaven and hell is buried in the vision . . . Had I the whole East and West, gladly would I give up all to be delivered from this awful terror that is hanging over me. . . . Alas for Umar, and alas for the mother of Umar, if it should not please the Lord to pardon me�� (Chapman 254). This agony and uncertainty of one�s eternal fate leads to paralyzing fear rather than to peace and happiness. This is not human flourishing!

3) Because God is omnipotent over everything, he predetermines all, both good and evil. Thus, Allah is sovereign but not morally perfect or exemplary. Islam means submission to God�s will, and leads to fatalism just as does Neo-orthoxy�s faith in the Void. This is not human flourishing!

4) Islam teaches compatibalist free will, which cannot be maintained in practice, as we observed with relation to Calvinism. Prayer and works become meaningless practically as God�s omnipotence is stressed. Beliefs that lead their adherents into impossible contradictions do not satisfy the Criterion of Human Flourishing.

5) There is no solution to the Problem of Evil in Islam. This does not provide the need foundation for human flourishing.

Polytheism was part of ancient Greek and Roman religion and is still practiced among remote tribes, and as part of popular Hinduism. The basic problem with polytheism is that it fails to solve the Problem of the One and the Many. God as singular Absolute unites the particulars and the plurality of the universe into a meaningful unity. Polytheism fails to do so because it posits plurality as the ultimate reality. Meanings are disjointed and unconnected. This is not a solid grounds for human flourishing and it negates the actualities of the singular true, good, and beautiful.

Deism has all the problems associated with Calvinism and Islam, with a few differences:

1) God has left the universe and creatures to fend for themselves. Human religious needs are unmet, leading away from human flourishing.

2) There is no basis for purpose, for Deism provides no teleology. God may have wound up the watch, but now that it�s winding down, what�s to say he won�t let it wind done to a standstill? All indications are that the same fate awaits the world as in Atheism. Human flourishing requires purpose.

3) Deism offers no clear hope for the afterlife (see Problem of Death), mitigating against human flourishing.

Buddhism and Hinduism are based on a monist metaphysic, as is Sufi mysticism. According to Monism, all is One. Hindus call that Oneness Brahman, i.e. God. Belief in God does not appear to have been originally part of Buddhism, but it too, posits a fundamental Oneness of substance as ultimate Reality into which all persons should seek to reabsorb themselves (nirvana). The Sufi poet Jami writes of the monist�s goal:

The goal for a Sufi is to escape from this world of numerous vain and illusory appearances, such as distinct persons, into Reality/God/the Absolute, which is One. As seen in Neo-orthodoxy (which in practice becomes a default monism), Monism has problematic living consequences:

1) If all is fundamentally One, there is no basis for differentiating good and evil. Cruelty and non-cruelty are essentially the same; what we call good and evil are both God, both Brahman. Hinduism expresses this in its Trinity of Being, Becoming, and Destruction (Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva). Shiva�s wife, Kalyma (or Kalee), whose name means �the black� was a perfectly evil God to whom Hindus offered human sacrifices were offered before the British suppressed Kalee worship in the 1830�s. Evil and good and indistinguishable in monism. Accordingly, Charles Manson asked, �If God is One, what is bad?� (Guiness 195). Nature is full of cruelty and suffering, so if this cannot be distinguished from the good of love, justice, and beauty, there is no basis for morality. Accordingly, Adolf Hitler said, �I cannot see why man should not be just as cruel as nature� (Guiness 155). The monist�s position about morality must be that it is an illusion, just as the Zen-master Yun-men teaches: �If you want to get the plain truth, be not concerned with right and wrong. Conflict between right and wrong is the sickness of the mind� (Guiness 195). Thus, monism undermines morality, utterly destroying the possibilities for human flourishing.

2) Monism destroys personalism. Hinduism teaches that Enlightenment is the realization that �Atman is Brahman,� i.e. the self is part of the undifferentiated divine Oneness. Buddhism teaches that Enlightenment is like a drop of water falling into the ocean, like a candle being extinguished. The goal for a monist is to cease to exist as a unique person, or independent mental-volitional unit. Without persons, most of the Criterion of Human Flourishing is nonsense, so monism is radically opposed to the Criterion of Human Flourishing.

3) Monism undercuts rationality, because rationality depends on personal existence. This is not human flourishing!

4) Monism undercuts love, for love depends on personal existence. This is not human flourishing!

5) Monism undercuts free will and activity, for free will depends on personal existence. Because monism teaches as immanent God (i.e. God is identified with the process of history), monism leads to fatalism. Whatever will be, will be, for the Oneness will continue to become as it will. This is not human flourishing!

6) Monism undercuts purpose, for there are no goals or endings in an eternal process of becoming. Monism can provide no positive soteriology or hope. Since God is eternal, escape is the only way to deal with suffering and evil. Purposelessness and escapism are not human flourishing!

7) Monism provides an unsatisfactory solution to the Problem of Evil, by claiming that evil is an illusion. There is no hope for the elimination of evil and suffering in the world. See problem #4. Human flourishing requires an adequate solution for the Problem of Evil, so monism is falsified for failing to provide one.

8) Monism undercuts meaning, for it provides no solution to the problem of the One and the Many, i.e. the relationship between universals and particulars. The diversity of persons, of cultures, of experiences has no significance; only the One Reality is.

9) Monism undercuts human transcendence, for it posits that all Being is undifferentiated, such that humans and cows are really no different. This leads to millions of humans starving while thousands of cows roam the fields of India. This is not human flourishing!

10) Because monism is fundamentally impersonal, I have chosen not to use the word Pantheism, which carries connotations of a personal God. In fact, calling the universe �God� doesn�t really mean anything at all, as John Montgomery explains:

An utterly trivial account of reality fails the Criterion of Human Flourishing.

Panentheism is really just another form of monism. While Pantheism equates the natural universe and forces with God, pantheism asserts that God is not exhausted by the natural universe and forces. The advantage of this distinction is that panentheism allows God to be transcendent as well as immanent; it allows for God to be somewhat personal or conscious. The most famous panentheists were G.W.F. Hegel and Alfred North Whitehead. The main idea of panentheism is that God is in process of becoming self-conscious, hence the term Process Theology. God is coming to self-consciousness in human beings; moreover, human self-consciousness is the Absolute or World Spirit coming to self-consciousness. For Hegel this occurs through the dialectical process, in which contradicting entities synthesize. The teleology of such a system is the final Unity of everything, in which all negations are at last overcome.

However both Pantheist and Panentheist conceptions of God are monist, and monism is falsified by the Criterion of Human Flourishing in all the ways listed above.

Mysticism is typically divided between personal and impersonal, or Western and Eastern, mysticism. The former, practiced by Christians such as St. John of the Cross, St. Teresa of Avila, and Thomas a�Kempis, seeks a union with God in which the self is not submerged into the divine substance. The latter, practiced by Sufi Muslims, Buddhists, and Hindus, seeks a union with Being/God in which the individual self is submerged or dissolved into the divine essence. However, mysticism can be divided between ontological mysticism and epistemological mysticism, a division which is more helpful for our purposes. Ontological mysticism is equivalent to Eastern/impersonal mysticism, positing ultimate reality as One. Epistemological mysticism is a way of coming to know God through mystical experience. Epistemological mystics claim that God is unknowable except through mystical encounter, and that since mystical encounter is affective, not cognitive, God is wholly ineffable. Religious systems and theologies are all human attempts to approximate God, and are useful for describing the mystical encounter with God. Neo-orthodoxy, which we have already looked at, is a prime example of epistemological mysticism in modern religious thought. History records many examples of mystics from around the world who taught epistemology mysticism as well. The principle implications of epistemological mysticism are God�s unknowability and Religious Pluralism with regard to God�s nature. For the living implications of these beliefs, see the analysis of religious pluralism below.

According to religious pluralism, all religions (or at least all the major world religions) are equally valid human approximations of the Divine, who is ultimately unknowable in a cognitive sense. John Hick, formerly a Christian, is probably the most outspoken and articulate intellectual representing Religious Pluralism today. Religious Pluralism may also be called Indifferentism, for pluralists remain indifferent about the exact nature of God, refusing to accept as final and normative any of the above views on God�s nature.

There are several kinds of religious pluralism. The most helpful division of pluralists is between institutionally syncretistic pluralists and institutionally non-syncretistic pluralists. First, institutionally syncretistic pluralists want all religions to come together to form one ultimate synergistic religion that will serve to unite all humankind. A fast-growing religion based on institutionally syncretistic pluralism is the Bahai Faith, an off-shoot of Islam, was started in 1844 by the Bab, a Persian religious teacher, and was developed by his disciple Bahaullah (1817-1892), whom Bahais claim to be the final manifestation of God in the world for the next ____ years. The central Bahai teaching is that God has manifested himself at various times during human evolutionary history to give humanity progressive revelation, doing so in such persons as Siddhartha, Krishna, Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, and finally Bahaullah. Because these religions feature revelation which is held to be appropriate to the respective level of evolutionary development of the human race at the time they were founded, later religions are more sophisticated and true. Bahaullah, the latest manifestation of God, is the prophet whose teachings are normative in the present era. Those of other religions should recognize in him the culmination of the revelation in their own religions and convert to Bahai. Institutionally syncretistic pluralists have to reinterpret and distort traditional religious teachings in order to make the various religions appear continuous. For example, Bahais reject the New Testament picture of Jesus as a Christian fabrication which tries to turn Christ into an exclusive Savior, which he never was.

Second, institutionally non-syncretistic pluralists believe that the world�s various religions should retain their institutional and liturgical distinctives. Institutionally non-syncretistic pluralists maintain their membership in their own religions, yet do not hold the traditional teachings of their religion to be unique or exclusively true. Most American Mainline Protestants (Christian Liberals) are institutionally non-syncretistic pluralists. Institutionally non-syncretistic pluralists often speak of the �richness of our religious traditions,� highlighting their beliefs both in the relativity of religious doctrine and the centuries of worship and community traditions which ought not be lost by merging all religions. The goal of institutionally non-syncretistic pluralists is to preserve their religious communities and traditions and still advance human unity and peace through a relativization of the truth claims of those faiths.

The key difference between institutionally syncretistic and non-syncretistic pluralists is that the former espouse a new or syncretized system as absolute truth; the latter are closer in thinking to Postmodernists, content to let everyone believe what they will since absolute truth is either illusory or unattainable.

Religious Pluralism is probably the dominant answer to the Problem of God�s Nature in the Western World today. Its popularity is based on historical developments which have led to the distrust of any one belief system as objectively true or adequate to account for the �manifold mystery of existence.� Conflicts and wars over ideologies, especially religious doctrine, had raged in Europe for centuries when people began to think (in similar terms at least), �Religious exclusivism leads to continual war; continual war is not human flourishing; whatever leads away from human flourishing cannot be true; therefore religious exclusivism cannot be true.� The sentiment, reflecting back on history was, �Let�s just live and let live. Let�s stop worrying about whether God is impersonal or personal and other trivial arguments. World peace and the unity of humankind are all that really matter. Religion is mostly about peace and love anyway.� These sentiments are extremely widespread today, and I believe the falsification-elimination argument above is the main reason so many people find this belief system appealing. Bahais, for example, like to present Religious Pluralism as the necessary precondition for the unity of humankind: so long as religious intolerance and dispute remain unresolved, human unity cannot occur. Implicit is the argument, �Anything which leads away from the unity of humanity cannot be true; therefore the other option, Religious Pluralism, which leads to a united humanity, must be true.�

I feel the force of this argument, but I believe it betrays a very superficial understanding of religion and the power of ideas. Consider the following:

1) Pluralists cannot resolve key doctrinal contradictions between religions. It is reasonable to say that all religions are only approximations of the Absolute, which is beyond comprehension, but it is not reasonable to say that two contradictory beliefs approximate the Absolute equally well. Consider several examples:

a) Is ultimate Reality personal or impersonal? (as we have seen, this decision has huge living implications);

b) At death, do human souls cease to be (secularism), reincarnate (Hinduism, Buddhism), or face judgment (Christianity, Islam)?

c) What is the basic problem with humanity, and how should it be solved? Are we caught in the illusionary world of samsara, which we can escape by uniting with the impersonal Oneness, thereby achieving the bliss of non-existence (Hinduism, Buddhism); Are we sinners in need of redemption and reconciliation with God (Christianity); Are we creatures needing to submit ourselves to the fate God has assigned us (Islam)?

In a rational universe, these cannot all be true or even equally-legitimate approximations. Because these three questions involve significant living consequences, each of us must wager on which belief to adopt. If our analysis of Judaism-Christianity and Monism are correct, there are huge problems leading away from human flourishing in Monism, which only belief in a personal God can overcome. Remaining indifferent about such an important matter leads precisely away from human flourishing. Indifference is apathy which passes in the name of tolerance. It is laziness in thinking which would allow personalism, free will, and morality to be dissolved because it considers the ideological difference between personalism and impersonalism trivial. Saying they are all equally-legitimate and that we need not commit to any system is unlivable nonsense.

The Abrahamic religions all recognize this point clearly, and have exerted considerable effort towards eliminating heresy, i.e. doctrine contradictory to their own. Moses, for example, repudiated the other religions of his day. Jesus, according to the Gospel of John, taught that �No one comes to the Father but through me� (John 14:6). Mohammed repudiated Arabian Polytheism.

2) In order to minimize the problem of contradictory doctrine, pluralists must resort to the severe reinterpretation of traditional doctrines of various religions. Often these reinterpretations are accomplished by claiming that the language of religious doctrine is metaphorical rather than univocal. Equally often, these reinterpretations are accomplished by positing the founder of a religion to have held different beliefs than those taught by the religions they founded. For example, Bahais claim that the historical Jesus believed essentially Bahai doctrines, but that the misguided early Christians distorted his teachings when they wrote the New Testament. Both methods of revisionism are back-handed and dishonest. Revisionist interpretations of religion (such as the Bahai revisionism of Christianity alluded to above) are far more likely to engender resentment and distrust than they are to foster a unified humanity. This is not human flourishing!

For related reasons

Postmodern relativism has an extreme version of Religious Pluralism. While Religious Pluralists see all religions as subjective attempts to grasp the incomprehensible, but objective God, postmodern relativists see God as a subjective truth. Postmodernists believe in anti-realism, i.e. that there is no objective reality; all (including God) is created by an individual�s mind for that individual�s world.

1) We should first observe that God as God is meaningless in an anti-realist framework. Postmodernism is atheism, and as we have seen, atheism leads away from human flourishing, so it cannot be true.

2) Postmodernism denies all the Actualities, forcing people to live inconsistently and act as though they believed in things they purportedly do not. This is not human flourishing!

3) Postmodern relativism is itself a meganarrative just as must as the other meganarratives it so detests. According to this meganarrative, people have been moving through history in ignorant word battles until the twentieth-century, when humans finally became Enlightened and understood that truth was relative and conflict avoidable if only this one absolute truth were heeded: there is no absolute truth. See, the whole thing hinges on a contradiction, on a view from nowhere fallacy, wherein the postmodern observer thinks he has escaped the vagaries of the world of ideas, an escape achieved only by means of his own particular idea. Poor thinking is not human flourishing.

4) If all is subjective, then so is the Postmodern idol of Tolerance. If there is no objective reality or morality, then there is no reason to be tolerant, either. Objective morality and truth claims is the precondition for tolerance, not its antithesis. So, Postmodernism must eventually become intolerant. Indeed, Postmodernism is already very intolerant. To whom? To exactly those people who believe the contradiction of what they believe, i.e. believers in any sort of objective truth besides their own. Absolute truth claims are inevitable. Everyone must believe that their beliefs are objectively true; the postmodern included, as seen in his reaction to objectivists. So, Postmodernism is impossible and blinds people to seeing their own absolute beliefs. This is not human flourishing!

5) As we observed with Religious Pluralism, Indifferentism on whether God is personal or impersonal is a laziness and apathy leading to destruction. This is not human flourishing!

Isn�t it conceivable that none of these answers are adequate and that there is another answer we haven�t yet discovered or may never discover? No, for we have exhausted all logical possibilities. The �none of the above� answer is really just a version of non-syncretistic Religious Pluralism. If God exists differently than any of the religions describe him, what else could God conceivably be like?

Furthermore, by invoking the Criterion of Human Flourishing, we see that the �something else� answer does not lead to human flourishing. It leads to Indifferentism.

The Abstract God of Plato and Aristotle, like the deist God, is too transcendent to have much relevance to the human situation. At best, he can provide a moral absolute, but he cannot communicate with us or meet our religious needs. Thus, this position is falsified.

So, all the possible solutions have been falsified except Judaism and Arminian Christianity. To adjudicate between these two, we need further experience as well as further evidence from other problems.

a. Ex nihilo by Personal Divinity

Because history has a beginning, evil may have an end.

1. By infinite-personal God (Monotheism)

a) Complex Trinitarian unity (Christianity)

---God sufficient in himself not to need universe to love and communicate with

b) Simple Unitary unity (Judaism, Islam)

--no explanation for unity in diversity

2. By finite-personal gods

a) Polytheism

b) Dualism???

--as Plato realized finite-personal gods were not big enough to explain universals

b. Ex nihilo-nihilo (Universe began without energy, mass, motion, or personality)

--Impossible, Unsustainable

b. Beginning with Impersonal

1. By extension of God�s essence (Monism, Pantheism, Buddhism, Hinduism)

2. Beginning with energy particles (Everything explained by impersonal, time, chance)

--no explanation of diversity within unity�meaning for particulars, human personality, freedom

??c. Eternal Existence of Universe (no creation)

The Problem of Evil is one of the most discussed problems in the history of philosophy. Far from being a purely academic problem, the Problem of Evil is extremely close to every human life, for every person experiences pain and suffering which seems unjust. The problem is old�at least as old as the Greeks Epicurus and Lactantius. Carnell summarizes the Problem of Evil as follows:

While the problem has generally been presented by atheists as an argument against theism, atheists are not immune to having to formulate a solution to the problem for themselves. Besides the four mentioned in the above quote, humans have suggested several other logical possibilities to the Problem of Evil:

a. God is omnibenevolent and omnipotent; Evil is the result of creaturely misuse of libertarian freedom (Arminian Christianity)

b. God is omnibenevolent (thus fighting evil) but finite, i.e. not omnipotent (Manichaeism, Plato, Pragmatism, Zoroastrianism, Dualism)

c. God is omnipotent but not omnibenevolent (Calvinism)

d. God is neither omnipotent nor omnibenevolent, but we should love God anyway (Kushner)

e. God is impersonal Oneness; evil is illusory (Monism, Christian Science)

f. God does not exist; �evil� is correctable problems (Atheism)

g. Evil does not exist except as a privation of good (Augustine, Bahai)

h. The problem is unsolvable; We must trust God against the evidence (Job, Neo-orthodoxy, Islam)

i. God is �beyond good and evil�

j. God must use evil to demonstrate his goodness by contrast

k. Suffering is God�s punishment for sin and method of teaching us (some Judaism)

We will now look at the alternatives more closely for further explanation of their approach to the Problem of Evil, then analyze their living implications with the Criterion of Human Flourishing.

In addressing the Problem of Evil, Christianity provides the following five points (Boa xx):

1) Evil does not originate with God except as a potentiality. Evil is the result of creaturely misuse of libertarian freedom. Granted that God could limit his power by giving humans libertarian free will, why would He do so since it brings the possibility of evil into existence? Libertarian free will is the precondition for personal love, which most people agree is well worth that price, costly though that price may be. As C.S. Lewis explains:

Conversely, if evil results from compatibalist (rather than libertarian) freedom, God could have created freedom without the possibility of evil, and is thus fully responsible for evil (see Calvinism). Christianity explains the world as morally dualistic, springing from an original monism, by God�s creation of free moral agents capable of choosing good or evil. However, this means evil must have existed antecedently for the agents to chose it. Evil existed antecedently, but only potentially. As Dorothy Sayers explains, evil is brought into potential/negative existence whenever God makes something good. Analogously, when Shakespeare wrote Hamlet, he brought a new category of being into existence: non-Hamlet. So, evil is a free creaturely perversion of the good God has created. For example, pedophilia is an evil which had potential existence as a result of God�s creating human sexuality as an enrichment for marriage and a means of procreation.

Natural evil, like moral evil, is a result of creaturely abuse of freedom. According to the Bible, God placed a curse (recorded in Genesis 3:14-19) on the natural order following the Fall. According to Romans 8:19-23,

In other words, the Creation itself partakes in the Fall of humans, a fall which is cosmic in its ramifications. Part of the curse was that Adam�s work would involve pain, toil, and frustration because God cursed the ground itself. Death, God had earlier warned Adam, was a consequence of sin: �you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die� (Genesis 2:17). Romans 5:12 records that �sin entered the world through one man, and death though sin.� According to Revelation 22:3, in the New Jerusalem, �No longer will there be any curse.� So, natural evil, including death, is unnatural. It is just as much a source of grief for God as for humans. The theologian Francis Schaeffer explains, �As Jesus stood [at Lazarus� tomb], He not only wept, but he was angry. The exegesis of the passages John 11:33 and 38 is clear. Jesus, standing in front of the tomb of Lazurus, was angry at death and at the abnormality of the world�the destruction and distress caused by sin. . . . Christ hated the plague. He claimed to be God, and He could hate the plague without hating himself as God� (Schaeffer 117). For the Calvinist, God intends the plague for good (not just transforms evil into good in a responsive way), so it hard to see how God could hate the plague.

But someone may object, how can natural evil be a source of grief to God if God, under no obligation was the agent of the curse? Sure, humans sinned and brought moral evil into the world, but why did God have to compound the problem by subjecting the creation to frustration and introducing natural evil? In reply, we must consider the doctrine of dominion. God had set up humans, the god-like creatures made in his own image, as the rulers of the earth: �Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground� (Genesis 1:26). So, since humans were to rule over creation (this was how God made them to be), and humans were fallen while the creation was still perfect, God had to curse the creation. Kenneth Boa explains, �Because Adam fell, the universe likewise was cursed, for fallen man could not have dominion over a fallen creation. . . . [But] When we are raised and glorified, the curse will also be removed and nature will be redeemed� (Boa 86).

2) God will eliminate evil and suffering at a certain future point in time. God will not allow evil to continue indefinitely, but provides assurances in the Bible that He will end certainly put an end to evil.

3) God works good out of evil and suffering, giving evil a purpose. The Arminian believes that there was no divine preordination of evil, and that evil was (and is) entirely the result of mishandled freedom. However, God responds to evil by transmuting it into a greater good. God�s glorious power is displayed in taking what human malice intends for evil and making a good come out of it. The classic biblical text is Romans 8:28, which says, �God works all things together for good for those who love him . . .� There is no evil so evil that God cannot transform it into a greater good. Augustine gave the name to this doctrine, felix culpa. (The Catholic liturgy for Holy Saturday explains, �O happy guilt, that did deserve such and so great a Redeemer!�). Looking back, we can see that even the heinous Fall of man was not so evil that the counteracting, superabundant love of God could not overcome it and turn it into the good of human freedom in the full cognizance of good and evil and redemption in Christ. In this sense, it was a good thing that we fell, so that God could achieve the greater good. As the British theologian Dorothy Sayers explains,

Sayers also explains that this doctrine can be easily misinterpreted to suggest that God needs our sin, that we should sin on purpose for the fun of watching God fix it, that evil doesn�t matter since God will overcome it in the end, that we should adopt a facile optimism, or even (like the Calvinist) that He makes us sin �in order to demonstrate his power and glory� (Sayers 15-16). Significantly, Christianity is able to attribute a positive value and significance to the evil and suffering we endure because of God�s transformative activity. Sayers writes,

For individuals dealing with sinful lives, the felix culpa doctrine gives the only possible solution: �In contending with the problem of evil it is useless to try to escape either from the bad past or into the good past. The only way to deal with the past is to accept the whole past, and by accepting it, to change its meaning� (Sayers 60).

4) Not all pain is bad in the moral sense. For example, Descartes explains that pain can prevent greater injury in many cases.

5) Death and suffering are not the worst that can happen to a person; they are comparatively inconsequential compared with spiritual, eternal suffering and death. This is important to keep in mind when considering specific incidences of the Problem of Evil.

What are the living implications of the Arminian answer to the Problem of Evil?

For the Christian, the problem is how to explain how evil came to be in the first place. The Christian has no difficulty explaining how evil will be overcome in the end, nor explaining evil in the universe presently (Carnell xx). The Arminian position successfully explains how evil came to be, without implicating God as unjust or evil. This view takes evil seriously, provides a grounds for fighting evil with God rather than against God, and gives confidence that evil will eventually be completely destroyed. Thus, Arminianism provides hope and reason for moral striving in the present.

Dualists criticize the Christian solution to the Problem of Evil on two grounds of living implications: first, that it weakens the distinction between good and evil, making humans less willing to resist and to fight evil; and second, that it undermines human effort to resist and fight evil by providing assurances that God will eliminate evil in the end. Neither claim is accurate. First, that moral evil exists principally as a willful misuse of what God intended for good hardly makes that misuse insignificant. Rather, by sticking to libertarian free will, the Arminian Christianity provides assurance that followers will take evil seriously, since humans and not God are responsible for it. Second, the Arminian Christian fights evil because it is evil and opposed to God and destructive, and every little bit that can be eliminated is a great gain for the glory of God and the welfare of human beings. In contrast, the Dualist must fight evil because God desperately needs his help and must fight despite the fact that evil will never be eliminated.

This position is not widely held today, but historically it has been a very prominent position, due primarily to the purported strength of its answer to the Problem of Evil. According to Finitism/Dualism, evil is real and the good God is real, and both are co-eternal (i.e. evil did not arise from God, even as potentiality). God and evil have been eternally struggling/competing with each other, and will continue to do so. According to many dualists, God will win in the end, through the help of human beings. God is fighting evil and humans are called on to join in this cosmic battle to overcome evil, though they can also chose to side with evil against God. Demos records that Plato subscribed to this view:

�God is a friend to man and an enemy to evil. Since God is finite, the conflict with evil is real. And since the receptacle is unchanging and timeless, the conflict with evil is everlasting. god takes sides in a battle of which the outcome is not a foreordained victory for his side� (Demos, The Philosophy of Plato, 121). Zoroastrians add that all souls, even those in hell will be reunited with their bodies and purified of evil at the end of time. Pragmatists such as William James found the Dualist answer to the Problem of Evil so expedient to human flourishing, that they pragmatically declared it true. In the mid-twentieth century, Professor Brightman was the most prominent advocate of Finitism. Brightman identifies two key living implication strengths of Finitism: 1) evil is not ascribed in any way to God�s will, thus rigorously maintaining the God/evil distinction; and 2) Finitism provides an inspiring motive for moral effort in cooperation with God (Carnell 288).

What are the living implications of the Dualist answer to the Problem of Evil?

Finitism explains the existence of evil and provides a basis for present moral striving, yet (despite its promises) fails to provide any basis for confidence that evil will ever be eliminated. If God is finite and has been fighting evil eternally (since both God and evil are independent and co-eternal), the reasonable conclusion is to say (like Plato) that this struggle will continue forever into the future. Some Dualists suggest that the recent advent of conscious human agents into the battlefield between God and evil offers evidence that the tide is turning, that God is beginning to win, and will ultimately eliminate evil. But, If God has been fighting eternally, it is only logical to hold that he has exhausted all the possibilities; therefore, the elimination of evil is not a real possibility. Further, why did God not introduce humans into the struggle earlier? If he could have and did not, then he is not all-good, for he permitted evil he could have prevented. Reason suggests that Dualist belief in the elimination of evil is against reason. When faced with a crisis and no reasonable basis for hope that fighting evil is valuable, who can sustain such moral struggle.

Moreover, Dualism�s strong eternal distinction between God and evil actually undermines its claim that the good is firm and indisputable. With two co-equal finite moralities, one good and one evil, it is a matter of preference alone to conclude which want we want to call good and which one evil. Unless there is something above God and evil, such as a moral order, there is no way to compare God and evil. This is probably why no historically-significant wholly-dualist system exists. For example, the Zoroastrians believe in a supreme God, Ahura Mazda (�the Wise Lord�) who created two Spirits: Spenta Mainyu (light and goodness) and Angra Mainyu (darkness, evil, death, and aggression).

This approach has not been taken very often, chiefly because it involves a contradiction. If God is neither omnipotent nor omnibenevolent, then he is not God, but a being, who like us, is subject to higher governing powers and moral laws. Nevertheless, Rabbi Harold Kushner popularized this view in a best-selling book entitled When Bad Things Happen to Good People. In the first part of the book, Kushner seems to be arguing the view that God is all-good, but not all-powerful (b, above), but by the end of his book, he speaks of God as imperfect, and needing humans to forgive and love him:

If �God� is not all-powerful or all-good and needs our forgiveness, Kushner is quite right: God is not as wise, strong, or perfect as we need him to be. The fact that God can give us inner strength in hard times hardly compensates for the existence of evil outside God�s control; there is no hope that evil or suffering will ever be eliminated. If God is subject to natural laws, then Kushner may be talking about an impersonal, pantheistic God. This view, while perhaps comforting to a small degree, cannot sustain human beings in the face of evil. God needs our pity, not our worship, if all he can do is help us deal with inescapable natural and moral evils.

Calvinists would object strongly to my classifying them separately from Christian orthodoxy in their answer to the Problem of Evil. This notwithstanding, I am convinced their answer to the Problem of Evil is much different from the Arminian answer. Because Calvinists are committed to a thoroughgoing view of God�s omnipotence, they hold that God has actively preordained everything that ever happens; nevertheless, humans are simultaneously free and responsible. This is called compatibalism. As a result of compatibalism, God could have created human freedom while simultaneously avoiding the possibility of evil. So, Calvinists are unable to appeal to the free will defense as a solution to the Problem of Evil. Instead, Calvinists hold that both Evil and its removal are vehicles of God�s gaining the greatest glory. In other words, there is no human explanation for why evil exists beyond that it exists to glory God; how and why it glorifies God are not clear.

Calvinists would also object strongly to my asserting that they believe in an omnipotent, but not omnibenevolent God. On paper, Calvinists affirm traditional Christian doctrine that God is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent. However, when pressed on what they mean by omnibenevolent, Calvinists state, �The good is what God does.� Luther admits this candidly enough, but makes an appalling appeal to faith against all the evidence, making the distinction between faith and stupidity all but invisible:

Luther concedes that all reason points to an unjust God; he appeals to the hope that in glory, Christians will understand how God is still just in damning the sinner who could not do otherwise.

Consider Calvinist E.J. Carnell�s explanation: �the universe, with all the evil in it, is the best of all worlds, for the very reason that God, the standard of good, has called it good� (Carnell 300). In other words, a protest against evil is meaningless since God decrees that this world is the best of all possible worlds. This is not an answer to the Problem of Evil, but a claim that the problem itself is out of order. In this case, God, from all appearances, is a sadist. And if that is so, we can believe he is good only against what evidence we have. Delusionary belief is not human flourishing.

Because all is God, �evil� is just as much God as is �good� for the Hindu. For the Buddhist both good and evil are part of the world of samsara, the world of illusion. In either case, evil and suffering are to be escaped by Enlightenment (Buddhism) or by �Moksha��escape through the realization that Atman is Brahman (Hinduism).

What are the living implications of the monist answer to the Problem of Evil?

There are several problems with the Monist solution. First, where did the illusion come from? If the illusion is ontologically real, then there is a real evil and the universe is not monist after all. If the illusion of evil is merely a bad mental state, the best thing to do is forget evil and clear your mind of its illusion. Thus, consistent pantheists must be fatalistic; pantheism provides no reason for or moral effort in the present. Fatalism leads away from human flourishing, so this must be a false answer to the Problem of Evil.

This is the same answer as that God �has neither the power nor the desire, [and is therefore] both impotent and evil, and consequently not God� (Carnell 277). As already mentioned, the atheist does not escape the Problem of Evil simply because the problem is most often presented as an objection to theism. Like the monist who does not believe in a personal God, the atheist too sees evil as an illusion. Both good and evil are moral qualities which cannot be supported by a monist system, whether that monism be a spiritual monism (Buddhism and Hinduism) or material monism (materialism). The secular humanist sees the �evils� of the world as minor problems which can be overcome through education and raising the standard of living.

What are the living implications of the atheist solution to the Problem of Evil?

All existence, including suffering, has no enduring value, purpose, or goal. Bertrand Russell�s �confident despair� gives no reason not to kill oneself.

This position, though, cannot be honestly held when confronted with real evil, such as murder, genocide, and child abuse. As argued in Part A, amorality is an unlivable belief. As such, it leads away from human flourishing.

Atheists also must address the Problem of Good. As argued in Part A, extreme happiness and wonder are part of human experience. Like human experiences of evil, atheists must likewise dismiss experiences of good as illusory and ultimately insignificant.

One popular approach to the Problem of Evil, made famous by the philosopher Augustine, is to deny evil any real existence. The Bahai faith also uses this approach. According to Augustine, working from the Neoplatonist �Ladder of Being,� all that exists is good; non-existence alone is evil, and it is a null, so evil is a null. Augustine explains, �there are certain elements which are thought evil. If I were to regard them in isolation, I would indeed wish for something better, but now even when they are taken alone, my duty is to praise you for them� (Confessions 126).

What are the living implications of the Augustinian answer to the Problem of Evil?

Any solution to the Problem of Evil which tells me that the Holocaust was a lessor good than Mother Teresa�s work in Calcutta, and that I should praise God for it is a poor solution indeed. This view minimizes and trivializes evil significantly by declaring it a lessor good. Moreover, by denying evil positive existence, this view makes evil meaningless. Evil is a correlative concept, i.e. its meaning is defined by the reciprocal relationship in which it stands with relation to its opposite (e.g. father and son, finite and infinite, prefect and imperfect). Good and evil are not like hot and cold, where both terms describe one concept, one by naming it and the other by indicating a privation. The problem is that heat may be described as an absence of coldness just as coldness may be described as a lack of heat. If good and evil were like hot and cold, we might as well say that the universe is evil and that goodness exists only as a privation of evil. Like pantheism and atheism, this is a monist solution, and all monist solutions are unable to support correlative concepts like good and evil. So, living out this view leads to a denial of the positive significance of evil, which prevents active opposition to evil from happening. This is not human flourishing!

All religions holding a thoroughgoing view of God�s omnipotence are led to the conclusion that the Problem of Evil is unsolvable. (So, this answer is really the Calvinist�s answer as well.) The book of Job in the Hebrew scriptures, if interpreted as a theodicy, gives only this answer:

Karl Rahner, a Catholic theologian heavily influenced by Neo-orthodoxy, summarizes this position:

Basically, Rahner is saying that God is unknowable mystery, that the experiential Problem of Evil is the force behind most skeptical objections to religion, and that Christianity consists in trusting God despite the hellishness of life, in clinging to belief in goodness, when goodness is only present in trace amounts. Islam, as seen in the section on the nature of God, teaches that God is so wholly Other and transcendent that he determines everything.

The novelist Thornton Wilder presented a version of this theodicy in his book, The Eighth Day. Kushner summarizes:

The tapestry analogy is very widespread and helpful for many people.

What are the living implication of the Neo-orthodox and Islamic solution to the Problem of Evil?

Proponents of this position take the Problem of Evil as a call to faith or even the grounds of faith, which they understand as trust in God despite evidence that God may not be good or just. While they hold that acceptance of this contradiction is the grounds for an enriching life of faith, in fact, acceptance of contradictions never leads to human flourishing. There is always a terrible tension in living out such beliefs which shows itself whenever crises arise that call God�s goodness or justice into question. Nobody would trust a mass-murderer, so why trust God, the greatest mass-murderer of all, if he controls all that happens? This is inevitably bad faith. As Kushner notes, the tapestry approach

is simply inadequate when brought to bear on real life evil and suffering:

Wishful, naive thinking does not lead to human flourishing. Moreover trust in God against the evidence leads to moral laxity as well, as seen in this Iranian folk proverb: �If you see a blind man, kick him; why should you be kinder than God?� (Kushner 87).

According to this view, all human categories, especially good and evil, are simply inadequate to account for the transcendent Otherness of God. To ask if God is good or evil is out of order; God is neither good nor evil; he created both good and evil, but these categories cannot be applied to him.

This is an obscurantist answer, which basically means the same as �g�: God is unknowable. This position presents itself as a reverential, humble attitude which exalts God higher than all human categories, but an unknowable God means no solution to the Problem of Evil, an anti-flourishing solution (see �g�).

This position has been offered by numerous groups, Jews especially. God could not be known as good except by creating evil as a contrast, so the argument runs. One of the most powerful presentations of this view is Isak Denison�s short story, �Sorrow Acre.� In the story, a landowner representing God sentences an old woman to a nearly-impossible, painful task, but by doing so, gives her the opportunity to overcome hardship and achieve a more profound glory than would be possible if there were no evil for her to overcome.

This is a version of Calvinism�s admission of evil as God�s preordained means of achieving the greatest possible glory by overcoming it after admitting it. Like the tapestry analogy, this answer provides some help in dealing with suffering and evil. Nonetheless, it still urges a passive acceptance rather than an acceptance tempered with active combattance, the attitude necessary for human flourishing. This attitude cannot be sustained without a strong ideological basis, which only Arminian Christianity provides.

Many Jews have taught that all evil is to be understood as a judgment for sin which God uses to teach and reform us�an excellent method given the stubbornness and ignorance of most people. Kushner describes two popular analogies advancing this view, the parenting and surgery analogies:

The problem with this approach, writes Kushner, is that �It may be true that surgeons stick knives into people to help them, but not everyone who sticks a knife into somebody else is a surgeon. It may be true that sometimes we have to do painful things to people we love for their benefit, but not every painful thing that happens is beneficial� (Kushner 23). If God really is working for our good, why doesn�t he make it somehow more obvious, just as a parent or surgeon who does not explain the connection between the punishment/surgery and the lesson/cure can hardly be considered a good parent or surgeon.

Several places in the Old Testament seem to teach this view of evil and suffering. The book of Deuteronomy records God�s words to the Jews through Moses:

The view of evil which interprets all evil as punishment for sin on the basis of this and similar passages is a very limited Biblical view. More significantly, though, it is a view which does not work in real life. Rabbi Harold Kushner explains,

This view cannot lead to human flourishing, because it cannot provide satisfactory answers in real-life, existential crises.

So, only Arminian Christianity offers an unfalsified, consistent, livable solution to the Problem of Evil which can ground and sustain the resistance of evil, the fighting of evil, and the hope that evil will be removed. It is thus confirmed and we confidently claim it as truth.

Soteriology means �theory of salvation� and refers to the very significant fact that every major system of thought in human history has been based on the conviction that humanity and individual humans have a major problem that must be somehow resolved, bringing about some kind of salvation or liberation. The various religions and philosophies offer different, often contradicting descriptions of our problem and its solution; they offer different soteriologies. Here are the major views (adapted from Halverson 2):

1) The basic problem is a fault of human will resolvable by human will

2) The basic problem is a fault of human will resolvable by divine grace

2) The basic problem is human ignorance

3) The basic problem is lacking a special experience

4) The basic problem is unsolvable

>>>>>To analyze these views in terms of the Criterion of Human Flourishing, we will see how well they affirm the Actualities, especially human transcendence. Is the world today normal or abnormal? If the problem is metaphysical, humans have always been fallen, there is no solution, and no answer to the Problem of Evil. If the problem is moral, there is a possible solution, there is hope, there is reasonable belief in a good God, and there is reason to fight wrong. If moral guilt is legitimate, then there is a possible solution; if not, all actions are morally meaningless.

According to Islam, Allah forgives by pronouncing forgiveness with no need for atonement or sacrifice as in Christianity. There are two important living consequences: first, God is arbitrary, i.e. unreliable. This is true with relation to the Problem of Evil, but is especially true as regards soteriology: if God forgives as he pleases, there is no confidence of salvation to provide sustenance for the present life.

Marxism only replaces the old capitalist system with a new system of greed

Sartre taught that despite the objective meaninglessness of an atheistic world, people can nevertheless create meaning for themselves by acts of the will. Any act will do for the purposes of self-authentication and creating meaning; no act is any better or more moral than any other. Sartre chose the path of Marxism to create meaning for himself. The trouble with this soteriology is that it is irrational wishful thinking built on an overt contradiction:

So, this epistemology is an irrational self-delusion, which cannot be the foundation of human flourishing.

As I understand it, Neo-orthodoxy actually has three soteriologies:

1) Authentically trust the Ground of Being; overcome anxiety, affirm life.

2) Experience the �Krisis� of revelation in which God discloses the vacuity of human life.

3) Do not hold any beliefs as true, for this is trying to justify yourself by belief.

All three could have been treated as separate soteriologies and dealt with independently, but I will address all three together here. The problem with the first is that it counsels irrationality. The problem with the second is that it relies on a non-rational, one-time experience to provide ongoing confidence in salvation. The problem with the third is that it is impossible. Even postmodern relativism (which Neo-orthodoxy counsels) is an ontological and epistemological position which must be assumed, believed, and acted upon. Neo-orthodoxy would have you never believe anything, and thus never do anything. This is an extremely unlivable and unflourishing position on all three counts.

This is how Paul in the New Testament describes the living implications of Christian living:

All these soteriologies are part of the phenomenon broadly known as the Enlightenment Project, or Classical Liberalism. Behind all these soteriologies are two basic assumptions: 1) inevitable progress of humanity, and 2) goodness of human nature. World Wars I and II brought about the death of both assumptions, at least as culturally-dominant. The world wars showed that inevitable progress was just a myth, just wishful thinking, and that the goodness of human nature was not sufficiently good to prevent mass-genocide and the greatest wars of history at the very peak of civilization, in the midst of the most civilized people. There was ample historical refutation of these assumptions before the world wars, but none was immediate enough to demonstrate conclusively to the culture at large, just how delusionary they are. Anyone who still holds to any form of this soteriology does so only by irrational optimism, by hope in the future against reason and all the evidence available.

Rousseau�s understanding of soteriology was that society corrupts people from natural development in a natural environment. While Rousseau did not advocate abandoning all products of civilization and returning to nature, his views did encourage the idealization and romantization of the Noble Savage. The twentieth-century painter Gauguin took Rousseau�s ideas the final step and left Europe to live on a primeval level in Tahiti.

Henrik Ibsen wrote, �Take away the life lie from the average man, and you take away his happiness� (Guiness 313). In The Humanist Frame, Julian Huxley similarly urges belief in religion for its salutary effects even though he believes religion is false (Schaeffer xx). Dr. L.D. Rue presented this soteriology in a speech to the American Academy for the Advancement of Science in 1991. Rue argued that in light of the fact of intellectual and moral relativism, humans must deceive themselves into believing the �Noble Lie� that the universe has value, that there is universal truth, and that humans should not live for self-interest. Without the Noble Lie, humanity will veer towards the �madhouse option,� in which social coherence is steamrolled under individual self-fulfillment, or the �totalitarian option� in which social coherence steamrolls self-fulfillment. A Noble Lie, says Rue, �is one that deceives us, tricks us, and compels us beyond self-interest, beyond ego, beyond family, nation, [and] race. . . . Without such lies, we cannot live� (Craig 71).

These statements demonstrate that even relativists recognize the unlivability of their beliefs and that action cannot be predicated upon contrary beliefs (i.e. that beliefs do matter). This soteriology also illumines the lostness of humans without God, that (if honest) they must resort to irrational Noble Lies to live. But does the Noble Lie model work, even if it is irrational? No. Bill Craig explains,

So, not only is the Noble Lie soteriology logically nonsense, but it also does not work. Neither irrationality nor unlivability are human flourishing, so this option is falsified.

According to Karl Jaspers, people can be �saved� from meaninglessness by having a �Final Experience,� an experience so big that it gives them certainty they really exist and hope that there is a meaning. According to the early Heidegger, the salvific experience was the experience of angst, a vague feeling of dread. According to Aldous Huxley, the �First-order Experience� was the means of salvation. Such an experience was to be achieved by taking drugs, especially LSD. This was a common practice among the 1960�s counterculture. Timothy Leary advocated a similar soteriology.

Heidegger is a classic demonstration of the desperate soteriolgies honest atheists are driven to in a scramble to locate some possible meaning for human existence. The early Heidegger hoped the experience of angst might somehow authenticate human life; the late Heidegger, in his book, <<<<, urged that we listen to the poet�not to anything in particular which the poet might say, but to the words and sounds. This is pure irrationality, trusting that the universe will somehow speak through the artist like a medium through a ouji board. Gage�s music, likewise, was written by the flipping of a coin; Gage hoped the universe would somehow speak through him. Again, the painter Pollock (known especially for his �Number 10�) made random, mindless paintings through which it was hoped that somehow some meaning might be conveyed. The failure of such projects does not need to be described. Irrationality leading to chaos is not human flourishing!

Sex has become an act of desperation in the twentieth century. The novelist Walker Percy repeatedly makes this point in his books. Sex as usually practiced is the cheapest and most readily-available pill for meaninglessness. For a time, it provides real guarantee that you as an individual person really exist, assurance crucially needed when anomic life all around argues that you do not really exist as a significant person at all. Similarly, Dorothy Sayers writes,

The problem with sex as a solution, besides the fact that it does not solve anything, is that it cannot even anesthetize the problem with any degree of permanence. Soon, even sex is meaningless and fails to alleviate the existential dread. This is the message of modernist novelist Hugh Miller: even sex, our last hope, is dead.

>>>> So, now we procede to the next question, what can we know about God? For this purpose, we will obviously be concerned with the possibility of God�s communication with us through special revelation as a source of knowledge about himself and who we are and what we should do. It will also be helpful to use the Unlivability Falsification Theorem to analyze theistic systems which present claims of special revelation.

****

>>>>>In conclusion, the existence of a personal God interested in humanity is granted as the necessary and sufficient condition of human transcendence, freedom, morality, the universe, and love, we would reasonably expect that God would seek to communicate with his creatures. Now, what are the conditions of possibility we would expect in such a revelation?

Linguistic and Propositional�since we communicate linguistically and propositionally

Gives explanation of human condition, explaining the problem and offering a solution

>>>>

a. Morals are relative

1. Hedonism/Relativism (the good is whatever I want to do)

2. Social Contract/Consensus/Group Theory (the good is what is in the best interests of the group)

3. Humanism/Comtism (the good is what is in the best interests of Humanity)

4. Situational Ethics

b. Morals are absolute

1. Kantianism

2. Christianity, Judaism, Islam

3. Unsupported virtue ethics (the good is obvious)

>>>>

Christian morality is grounded upon the metaphysics of Christ: love, forgiveness, and tolerance all find their ultimate rationale in God�s atoning sacrifice for human sin.

The Problem of the One and the Many is, according to many philosophers, the single-most important philosophical problem. William James wrote that he could typically figure out all of a person�s beliefs just from their solution to the Problem of the One and the Many. Basically, the problem is how to relate the many (i.e. the particular phenomena) to the one (the universal). For any particular to have meaning, whether we are speaking of a particular person in the world, or a particular dot on a pointalist painting, or a particular letter in a novel, that particular must be related to a much larger integrated whole (�the One�) from which its meaning is established. The Many are the contingent facts; the One is the normative reality in terms of which the facts are understood. Here are some of the options:

a) Monism (Pantheism)

b) Pluralism (Pragmatism)

c) Christian Teleological Unity (Christianity)

Here is further explanation and analysis of the alternatives:

According to monism, all is fundamentally One, Being. The pluralism of the many is illusory; all is essentially Oneness. The connections between the many are necessary. Parmenides and Gorgias were early proponents of monism, i.e. that all is Being. They stated that the world of flux�the many and changing known from sense experience�is an illusion. Logic and conceivability are the guides to developing the monist conception of the world through the rationalist epistemology. The rational is the real and the real is the rational, as Hegel states.

One consequence of monism is that change is impossible, since any object is either A or not-A; there are no intermediate stages to explain change. Another consequence is that the human drama, especially that of an individual human life, are largely overlooked. A metaphysic based on pure logic independent of experience (which is all in flux) will be irrelevant almost by definition.

According to Pluralism, all is fundamentally diverse, in flux, Becoming. The apparent diversity of phenomena is not united in any deeper oneness. Heraclitus and Protagorus were early proponents of pluralism, i.e. that all is Becoming. Heraclitus worked out the metaphysics of pluralism, and Protagorus worked out the corresponding epistemology, empiricism. Heraclitus is famous for explaining his metaphysic: �no one can step into the same river twice.� Nature is reality, so reality is in the process of becoming.

Pluralism has its problems, too. Whereas monism offered logic without experience, pluralism offers experience without logical connections, i.e. without deductive normativity. Whereas monism offers a view of the whole in which relevance to particular humans is lost, pluralism offers data well grounded in experience, but without any perspective of the whole by which those particulars have meaning. Moreover experience discloses intelligence, suggesting an enduring self, i.e. some unity, stability, permanence at least, in a world dominated by flux and change. Pluralism cannot explain the existence of this unity.

Christianity postulates that the unifying connections between the many are teleological (not necessary), that the facts of history derive their meaning from God�s plan and will, to which history is directed.

>>>>

Qur�an: �Marry women of your choice, two, three, or four; But if ye fear that ye shall not Be able to deal justly (with them), Then only one, or (a captive) That your right hands possess� (IV.3).

a) One flesh; Lifelong; Monogamous; Mutual submission (Christianity)

b) Autonomy; Unspecified duration (Existentialism, Beauvoir, Russell, Berenson, Youwei)

c) Hierarchical (Judaism)

d) Polygamy (Islam, Mormonism)

Here is a further explanation and analysis of the various options:

In Christianity, authority and submission are collapsed together and work together in service and love for others. Snodgras writes, �Submission is not the same as obedience or doing someone else�s will, and it certainly is not weakness. Submission by Christians means the voluntary surrender of one�s rights or will in response to the purposes and actions of God� (87). Though hierarchicalism has sometimes been passed as Christian doctrine, this is not justified. The Bible describes women as the �weaker vessel� and men as their head only in the sense that men, who are undeniably physically stronger, are responsible to protect their wives.

According to Christian theism, �History is the plan which was conceived in the mind of God from eternity to be the medium through which His glory would be displayed to all, and by means of which many sons should be brought to glory� (Carnell 91). �The chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever� (Westminster Confession). >>>>

God must be sovereign over history, or else God provides no confidence in moral striving and in facing death. God must be related to the process of history, or else his sovereignty as no human relevance. God must have created the world at some time; otherwise, since the world had no beginning, evil can have no ending; it will continue as an inextricable part of the process of history forever more, just as it has forever heretofore.

a) Historical nihilism

b) Historical skepticism

c) Historical subjectivism

d) History as Cyclical (Greeks, Romans, Seneca, Aurelius, Spengler)

e) Salvation History: Creation, Fall, Redemption, Two Cities, Eternal Reward and punishment.

1) Augustine city of God

1) Premillennialism

2) Postmillennialism

3) Joachim of Floris (Mollegen 79)

f) History as inevitable progressive advancement toward communism (Marxism)

g) History as inevitable progress towards human liberal society (Enlightenment, Liberalism, Johann von Herder)

h) History as coming to self-consciousness of Spirit/Absolute in the world (Hegel, Whitehead, process theology)

i) History as expression of Reason (Kant)

j) History as societal corruption of human spirit (Rousseau)

k) History as providential free market �invisible hand� (Capitalism, Adam Smith)

We began this paper with an analysis of Enlightenment epistemologies and worked toward the Transcendental Pragmatist epistemology. Here we will review the epistemological options here.

William James began his book Pragmatism with a falsification of rationalism and empiricism based on human flourishing, from which he argued toward the Pragmatist epistemology as the most useful epistemology. Similarly, E.J. Carnell began his book of Christian apologetics with an analysis of the inadequacies, both logical and practical, or empiricism and rationalism. We will borrow some of the insights of both. Here are the options:

a) Rationalism (Plato, Augustine, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz)

b) Empiricism (Aristotle, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Comte, early Wittgenstein, Ayer)

c) Kantianism (Kant)

d) Pragmatism (Pierce, James)

e) Intuitionism (Epistemological Mysticism, Neo-orthodoxy)

f) Authoritarianism/ Traditionalism

g) Consent of Nations

h) Thomism (Aquinas)

i) Systematic Consistency (Carnell)

j) Common-Sensism (Reid, Edwards)

k) Postmodern Anti-epistemology (Nietzsche, Rorty)

l) Transcendental Pragmatism

By their very nature, epistemologies determine the nature of the worldviews which they can validate. Therefore, worldviews may be falsified if the epistemologies on which they are grounded are in principle inadequate. Epistemology is a genuine problem because everyone, whether self-consciously or unself-consciously, must take a stance of what knowledge is and how it is acquired. Otherwise, there is no way to distinguish truth from falsehood and to avoid being manipulated by dangerous self-labeled dispensers of knowledge, such as politicians, cult leaders, and orators. Since there is great disagreement in the world, everyone must have criteria for distinguishing among them. Here are the options:

Rationalism seeks to develop a self-consistent worldview from self-evident first principles. For Descartes, this self-evident first principle was cogito ergo sum, I think, therefore I am. From this, he proceeded to deduce the rest of his system. The first problem with rationalism is that it has no controls to prevent it from producing wild flights of the imagination, thoroughly ungrounded in evidence or real-life experience. The law of non-contradiction is about the only control rationalists have, but even this cannot limit their �hypothesis-happy� speculations. The second problem is that because rationalism is not somehow grounded in empirical reality, it is �high and dry,� i.e. formal and irrelevant. The third problem is that rationalism is based an the a priori metaphysics of monism, which is problematic because of the implications of monism (see the Problem of Meaning). This is not human flourishing!

Empiricism seeks to build knowledge through sense data. Whereas rationalists hold that we possess some knowledge as innate ideas, empiricism holds that nihil establish in intellectu nisi prius fuerit in sensu, i.e. there is nothing in the intellect that is not first in the senses. Locke called this the tabula rasa, i.e. blank slate, doctrine.

Comte started Positivism, which holds that no knowledge exists except that which we discover through empirical science. Logical positivism was a twentieth-century movement which developed from Positivism, under the leadership of the Vienna Circle, the early Wittgenstein, and A.J. Ayer. Logical Postivism died under the critique of <<<<.

Historically, empiricism has led to positivism and positivism to skepticism and skepticism to nihilism. Empiricism is also based an the a priori metaphysics of pluralism, which is problematic because of the implications of pluralism (see the Problem of Meaning).

The faults of empiricism have been detailed by modern philosophers of science, including Popper, Kuhn, Polyani, and Feyerabend<<<. However, most of their key points were may by Hume several centuries earlier, and by Plato several millennia earlier in his dialogue, Thaetetus. Plato made several points. First, empiricism makes human beings the authors of reality, since sensation depends on human observers. As Berkeley stated, this suggest that a tree cannot fall unless someone is there to hear it fall. Skepticism is the next step. Second, empiricism holds that reality is nature, so the only way to know is through sense perception. Knowledge, therefore, consists of sensation and sensation alone. This makes all judgments true, since there is no rational evaluation of sense perception to determine knowledge. Third, without false knowledge, �true� is meaningless, because truth is a correlative concept, which depends on �false� to give it meaning. Fourth, because empiricism sees to find knowledge by studying the flux of sense data, it is bound to fail, for out of flux only flux can come. No universality or necessity can ever be derived from sense experience, since sense experience is always limited and contingent. Induction can never achieve necessity, as Hume pointed out, so all empiricism can conclude is that there is a 50/50 chance of an event, or its opposite, occurring. There is absolutely no reason to believe the sun will rise tomorrow, Hume argued, for experience can always be different and there is no necessary in experience. Further, there is no empirical basis for belief in causation, substances, or an enduring self. Even on basic questions of knowledge, empiricism forces one to skepticism. Under the conditions of a world in which there is a 50/50 chance of anything, or its opposite, happening, meaning is impossible. Carnell writes, �In an open universe, it is impossible to speak meaningfully at all, for anything may be its opposite before a concept can be translated into a word� (Carnell 212). Changeless criteria of meaning are impossible, for all is in flux, including even the statement that �all is in flux�! Cratylus, a follower of Hericlitus, understanding that empiricism implied that all sensible particulars are perpetually in flux, making significant speech impossible, refused to say anything at all. He only waved his finger. Fifth, empiricism is impossible because crimes cannot be punished since there is no unchanging personal identity.

Whereas rationalism encouraged hypothesis-happy philosophers, empiricism encourages philosophy to be afraid of making an explanatory hypothesis at all. Whereas rationalism provided explanations of meaning, but without relevancy to this world, empiricism is relevant to this world, but provides no explanations of meaning.

Another problem with empiricism is that it is reductionist in nature. For example, science can describe what is, but can never what ought to be; science can tell us nothing about ethics or what we should do. It also refuses to consider that internal states may offer forms of knowledge, which, while subjective, are nevertheless extremely important . Wittgenstein wrote, �We feel that even when all possible scientific questions have been answered, the problems of life remain completely untouched� (Wittgenstein 6.52, p. 73). The American novelist Walker Percy stated the same thing: science does not answer any of our most important questions: what it means to be a man, what it means to live, and what it means to die. Leo Tolstoy found that empiricism was so reductionist that it could not answer the only crucial question, the question of the meaning of life:

So, empiricism is reductionist by nature and ends in nihilism. It undermines any basis for enduring personal identity, reality, and meaningful concepts of language needed for communication and knowledge. This is not human flourishing!

Kant was dissatisfied with both rationalism and empiricism: validity without real facts is empty and the facts of experience without formal direction of the law of non-contradiction are blind. Kant wrote that Hume �awakened me from my dogmatic slumbers.� Hume made Kant aware of the pitfalls of empiricist epistemology, i.e. that empiricism could not account for �synthetic a priori� knowledge which he possessed, for example in science. Kant concluded that the human mind interprets sense data according to innate categories called pure concepts of the understanding, which included time, space, causation, and substance. Kantianism is a combination of rationalism and empiricism.

Pragmatism, according to William James, is �first, a method; and second, a genetic theory of what is meant by truth� (Pragmatism 33). As a method, Pragmatism locates truth by finding the most expedient/useful belief(s). As a genetic theory of truth, Pragmatism is the explanation that all knowledge is in the process of becoming. Truth is always being made (not discovered), always in flux, always being reformed, always plastic, always tentative, always relative. The truth is �only the expedient in the way of our thinking, just as �the right� is only the expedient in our way of behaving� (James, Pragmatism 100). The process of the development of truth is a kind of dialectical progression in which an old truth is reformed into a new truth as people come into contact with new experiences that challenge old truth.

Pragmatic �truth� is not truth as traditionally understood; it has no necessity (it is plastic) and no universality (truth is a way of thinking relative to every individual). Pragmatism does focus attention on human needs, but cannot support happiness because of its naive grasp of human psychology. It is impossible to live effectively with the view that everything one believes and upon which one makes major life decisions is just a plastic idea.

As G.K. Chesterton explains, �I agree with the pragmatists that apparent objective truth is not the whole matter; that there is an authoritative need to believe the things that are necessary to the human mind. But I say that one of those necessities is precisely belief in objective truth. . . . Pragmatism is a matter of human needs; and one of the first of human needs is to be something more than a pragmatist� (Chesterton, Orthodoxy 36). William James admitted almost as much in The Will to Believe, when he observed that we are all absolutists in our beliefs. As an example, consider the claim that people should believe in an afterlife because belief in an afterlife is more expedient to happiness. Real people cannot appropriate the benefits of belief in something they know may well be a delusion. This is not human flourishing! Also, Pragmatism (like empiricism) cannot ground any confidence that the world will not change radically tomorrow. Pragmatism�s theory of truth seems to imply that the �regularity of the universe is contingent upon the moment-by-moment experience of man� (Carnell xx).

According to Intuitionists, truth is known by subjective immediacy in supernatural mystical experiences. Intuitionism leads to a number of problems (adapted from Carnell):

1) Intuitionism may provide access to some supernatural reality, but it cannot do any more. Beside the Problem of the Existence of God, Intutionism cannot answer any of the genuine problems, including (most significantly) the Problem of Evil, the Problem of the Nature of God, and the Problem of Death. Answers to all the genuine problems are necessary for human flourishing, but intuitionism can give only one answer. This is not human flourishing!

2) There are no controls for preventing irrational action coming from nonrational beliefs. A mystic may claim to have had an experience telling him to walk across the country on his head. This is not human flourishing!

3) Intuitionism provides only momentary confidence of even divine existence. Life is full of doubt, difficulty, and intuitions of meaninglessness and angst. There is no way for feelings or intuitions to criticize among themselves. Schleiemacher, for example, taught that the feeling/intuition of absolute dependence was the grounds of religion. But, other feelings like rage, apathy, and suffering might just as well be taken as the paramount intuition.

4) Intuitionism provides no possibility for agreement among competent investigators, setting up a radically individualistic world. With no possibility of agreement, human flourishing is not possible.

5) Intutionism, because of the disparity of intuitions, involves polytheism. There is no reason to assume that one God inspires all these divergent intuitions, when it is unclear if God even exists apart from these intuitions. Polytheism cannot solve the Problem of the One and the Many, so it leads away from human flourishing.

6) Intuitionism is by nature elitist, locating truth within a selective group, usually of a certain psychological disposition, who have access to mystical insights. Intuitionism then establishes a leadership of irrationalists. This is not human flourishing!

A tremendous amount of what we classify as knowledge we take on the basis of authority: the authority of parents, of teachers, of friends, and of the media. This is unavoidable. But for the really essential questions of life, including all the genuine problems, unsupported authoritarianism is not an adequate epistemological basis, for there is no guarantee that the authority giving direction is not simply the blind leading the blind, both of whom will fall in the pit.

These are two epistemologies whose weakness is fairly apparent. Custom/Tradition often has passed down wrong and misleading information. The consent of the nations, like custom, is an authoritarian epistemology. Again, there is no assurance that the blind are not leading the blind into a pit; this is not human flourishing!

Aquinas proposed as two-fold epistemological scheme: 1) Natural theology (empiricism) establishes that God is; 2) Church authority (authoritarianism) explains the nature of God and additional doctrines. Since reason can establish that God exists, it is not unreasonable to exercise faith that God has revealed additional truth through the Church.

The major problem with this is that empiricism cannot establish God�s existence. Hume�s critiques of the Thomistic proofs show the weakness of natural theology. Here are some specifics (from Carnell):

1) Empiricism, by nature, cannot ever achieve universality and necessity for any truth claim, as seen above.

2) The universe is a finite effect, so a finite Cause is all that can be inferred. The principle of economy prevents the inference of an infinite Cause from a finite effect.

3) The inference of one God from five proofs is fallacious. Even if his individual arguments stood up, Aquinas did not demonstrate why his arguments did not prove five gods. Since none of the gods deduced are infinite (see point #2), there may be thousands of gods in addition to the five Aquinas proved.

4) Empiricism must violate its first principle, tabula rasa, in order to use to the supernatural correlative concepts (such as uncaused, unmoved, perfect, infinite, and necessary). When Aquinas speaks about an uncaused cause, he is employing a concept, uncaused, which cannot be found in sense experience and therefore is off-limits for an empiricist. Uncaused is a supernatural correlative concept, so since sensation only presents caused, uncaused must be given as an innate idea. Thus, a Christian rationalist explaining these concepts as innate knowledge of God, could then appeal to the Thomistic proofs as a recognition of God in nature. Empiricists like Aquinas cannot do this.

5) If God is to be known through the present state of the world, all evil must be attributed to him as well. Natural theology leads to an evil God.

6) Thomism falters on the Problem of Predication, i.e. how to find concepts that can be predicated on God. Since all knowledge is from experience, i.e. non-God, it is very problematic to state anything as a description of God. For example, stating that �God is good� requires that �good,� a quality known from experience, applies to God in the same way as to non-God, from which you derived the quality. Aquinas tries to solve this problem by stating that predications on God are analogical, rather than univocal (one clear meaning) or equivocal (ambiguous meaning). However, in an analogy, the only thing which prevents the whole thing from being equivocal is the parts that are univocal. If there are no univocal parts to the analogy, the analogy must be equivocal. Aquinas� �Analogy of Being� is an unsuccessful salvage operation. Conversely, the Christian rationalist may predicate on God the qualities given as innate ideas, such as the supernatural correlative concepts.

7) The teleological argument fails because there may be noncontingency somewhere in the universe where we just have not yet looked. We do not know that the universe is completely contingent.

8) Even if Aquinas� proofs were successful, and even if they could prove the existence of one God, they say nothing about the nature of that God (except that both good and evil can be attributed to him). Thus, Thomist natural theology produces an unknowable God; anything might be said about God subsequently with no rational basis for critique or confidence.

Thomism involves other problems as well. First, as an epistemology, Thomism is bifurcated; it is like �changing horses in midstream� (Carnell xx). This is in itself suspect, suggesting that neither epistemology is adequate and that Thomism is an attempt to path together two inadequate epistemologies. Second, there is no clear connection between the two parts of his epistemology; an unknowable God in no way implies a Church authorized to teach infallible doctrine regarding history and the nature of God. Third, the authoritarian part of Thomism, since it is disconnected from the natural theology part, is subject to the criticisms of an unaided authoritarianism: there is no reason not to believe it to be a case of the blind leading the blind into a pit. This is not human flourishing!

Carnell advances this epistemology as a middle way between rationalism and empiricism. He writes, �A judgment is true and may be trusted when it sticks together with all the facts of our experience, while a judgment is false when it cannot. . . . By �experience� we mean the total breadth of human consciousness which embraces the entire rational, volitional, and emotional life of man, both within and without. . . . It is the breadth of definition which saved the Christian from the narrowness of another Spinozistic rationalism on the one hand, or Humean empiricism on the other� (Carnell xx). Systematic consistency combines rationalism�s formal, logical criteria with empiricism�s evidence/data taken from the totality of experience. It uses as criteria of truth both �horizontal self-consistency and vertical fitting of the facts,� the facts being both internal evidence (e.g. rationality, morality, self-preservation, conscience, and quest for hope) and external evidence (facts of history and scientific facts.

Carnell argues that the irrelevancy of rationalistic systems and the reductionism of empiricist system suggests that the right system �must be free enough to explain the facts, yet restricted enough to explain the facts. He is quite right and systematic consistency appropriates the benefits of rationalism and empiricism without acquiring the faults of either. But systematic consistency operates by assuming a hypothesis and then testing it. The only problem with this is that it lacks a common ground starting point in evidences, but this is not a significant objection.

Common sense philosophy, dominant in Scotland and articulated most significantly by Thomas Reid, was an important part of 19th century thought. Most nineteenth-century conservative Christian theologians, at least in America, relied upon common sense epistemology in their apologetics. Both knowledge of an objective, external world and of objective morals were held to be common sense, i.e. senses which everyone had in common.

Like C.S. Lewis, we fail to see how starting with a preoccupation with the question of immortality �could fail to corrupt the whole thing (Lewis Surprised 126-127); however, to leave it out would be a glaring omission which would mitigate against anything positive which has been achieved in this inquiry. Pascal rightly observes, �The last act is bloody, however fine the rest of the play. They throw dirt over your head and it is finished for ever� (Pascal 165). Bill Craig writes, �The universe is plunging towards inevitable extinction. There is no escape. There is no hope� (Craig 58). Tolstoy records in his Confessions that the Problem of Death is the bottom line for all human wisdom. He cites Siddhartha, Socrates, Solomon (Ecclesiastes), and Schopenhauer as the pinnacle of human wisdom clothed with authenticity: we will die, nothing will last, everything is meaningless; life is suffering, so death is the best thing that can happen to you. If there is nothing more, then there is no refuting this arguments. Life is utterly meaningless. But life is not utterly meaningless, so there must be more; but what else, and is there any evidence on which to basis belief in that something more? Here are the various answers (adapted from Carnell 337-339):

a) Death is it and this is not a problem (Materialism)

b) Technology will soon eliminate aging and death

c) We can life forever through our genes and offspring

d) We can live forever through our fame and influence

e) We can experience eternal life as the awareness of oneness with God

f) We can live forever through reincarnation

g) We can believe in a personal afterlife of the soul based on substance dualism

h) We can believe in a personal afterlife because belief in an afterlife brings peace and blessings (Pragmatism)

i) We can believe in a personal afterlife because of mystics� experiences

j) We can believe in a personal afterlife because I history God has beaten death in Christ (Christianity)

Now, we will further examine the options and see whether or not they lead to human flourishing:

As seen in the opening citations of Pascal and Tolstoy, as well as the atheistic quotations under Problem #1, this view does not lead to human flourishing at all, but undercuts it at the essential point of meaningfulness and purpose.

However, some atheists have argued that death is a good and natural thing. Immortality is merely a felt need invented by religionists. Feuerbach makes this argument in his Lectures on the Essence of Religion. He writes that the desire for immortality is artificial, imaginary, and not the desire of a real human heart. The limitations which Christianity tries to escape through the doctrine of the afterlife are not really limitations, but the necessary determinations of the human essence, which cannot be dissociated from it. Man, says Feuerbach, has many desires which he does not really wish to fulfill; immortality is the most prominent of them. Even if someone could life forever, he would get bored and yearn for death. All a man really wants is to avoid a premature, violent, or gruesome death. There is nothing frightening about a normal, natural death (Lecture 30).

In light of the darkness and desperation of death, it seems that atheists like Feuerbach argue that death is not a problem as a way of coping with the bleak vacuousness of life. Fundamentally, this is an inauthentic, dishonest way of living. Brent Becker<<???>> has made this point in his book, The Denial of Death. The Marxist historian Ernst Bloch has written that the materialist belief that death ends all is hardly �sufficient to keep the head high and to work as if there were no end.� Modern people get through life only by subconsciously borrowing the belief in immortality held by earlier generation of theists. In this way, �modern man does not feel the chasm that unceasingly surrounds him and that will certainly engulf him at last. Through these remnants, he saves his sense of self-identity. Through them the impression arises that man is not perishing . . . This quite shallow courage feasts on a borrowed credit card. It lives from earlier hopes and the support that they once provided� (Craig 68-69). The fact is that all honest people must admit that death is a terrifying, inescapable reality which destroys all meaning and striving if there is not reason to believe in an afterlife.

This is not a reasonable hope in terms of present scientific knowledge, nor would it likely lead to human flourishing, but rather overpopulation, overcompetition, boredom, and the loss of meaningfulness of action (since any action could be done in the infinite future). Moreover, those with disabilities and in great pain (assuming technology cannot fix everything) will find no relief or hope for relief. If eternal life exists, it will only lead to human flourishing if it exists in a different reality than this one.

These options are undisguised attempts to soften the blow of mortality from a materialist perspective. Neither of these offers any real consolation or solution to the Problem of Death, so they lead away from human flourishing, and merely try to obscure that failure.

Here, eternal life is defined something like �the uniting of ourselves here and now with the then and there of always and everywhere.� This is sometimes taught by Neo-orthodox theologians; it is actually the essence of Hinduism. Is eternal life, so-defined, adequate to allow human life to contain meaning? In this view, an individual human life, or even all human life, are not intrinsically meaningful, but meaningful only as they partake of the infinite Oneness. Meaning comes only out of impersonal dissolution of self, which mitigates against human flourishing.

The whole point of Hinduism and Buddhism is to escape from eternal life through reincarnation, not to live forever through reincarnation. This demonstrates the unfruitfulness of both the metaphysical immortality of �e� and the reincarnating immortality of �f.�

The foregoing options demonstrate that impersonal, metaphysical, or naturalistic conceptions of immortality lead away from human flourishing; a personal afterlife is necessary for human flourishing. Noting this, Pragmatists like William James suggest that we should believe in an afterlife because this will make us happier and bring us more peace. Snowden writes, �Tried by the pragmatic test, whether applied by the psychologist, scientist, or prophet or Christian believer, our faith in immortality stands justified. Without this vision the highest and finest life would perish� (Carnell 339). The problem with this pragmatic solution, as with all pragmatic solutions, is that it fails to realize (as Chesterton says) that the first and greatest of human needs is the need to be something more than a pragmatist. In other words, one cannot really live as though there were an afterlife on the basis of no reason whatsoever. Even if this were possible, we would call it delusion, not wisdom. People need rational confidence; they do not base their lives on what they know is wishful thinking.

So, seeing that personal immortality with adequate rational basis is a necessity for human flourishing, we must seek adequate evidence on which to predicate belief in the afterlife. A popular answer among Enlightenment deists was that substance dualism was a sufficient grounds for belief in the afterlife. Descartes probably was the first to make this argument in his Meditations of First Philosophy. Rousseau repeated the argument in Emile, and many others have used it, too. Substance dualism is established by the conceivability of a thinking mind independent of a body and by the conceivable divisibility of the body, but not of the mind. Then, it is held that the death of the body implies nothing as to the fate of the soul/mind, which is of a different substance. So, the soul most likely survives death.

This is a decent argument, but it relies on weak arguments for substance dualism. Better arguments for substance dualism are the necessary precondition of possibility for rationality and libertarian free will. But, given substance dualism, the argument is not entirely persuasive. Even substance dualists concede that the body and mind are extremely intimately connected, so might the death of one reasonably imply the death of the other? More certain evidence is necessary to ground human hopes for personal immortality.

This is not a great argument, since we are seeking immediate, rational evidence to provide grounds for confidence in immortality. Mystics� experiences are not rational, nor are they immediate (unless you are a mystic). This basis cannot sustain hope for immortality, necessary for human flourishing, so it is falsified.

<<<<<

Reply to Neo-orthodoxy

�The question is not about isolated �miracles,� but about the whole conception of Christianity . . . Is there a supernatural Being�God? Is there a supernatural government of the world? Is there a supernatural relation of God and man . . . ? Is there a supernatural revelation? Has that revelation culminated in a supernatural Person�Christ? Is there a supernatural work in the souls of men? Is there a supernatural redemption? Is there a supernatural hereafter?� (Orr, A Christian View of God and the World, 244).

�All is wonder; to make a man is at least as great a marvel as to raise a man from the dead. The seed that multiples in the furrow is as the bread that multiplies in Christ�s hands. The miracles is not greater manifestation than God�s power than those ordinary and ever-repeated processes; but it is a different manifestation� (Trench, Notes on the Miracles of Our Lord, 252).

Significance: (closely related to freedom)

a. Materialist Personalism (Humanism, Materialism) from impersonal, time, and chance

b. Divine Personalism (Christianity, Judaism, Islam?)

c. Dead/Machine (Nihilism, Behaviorism)

c. Impersonal (Buddhism)

Morality:

a. Perfectible/Clean Slate (Islam, Judaism, Zoroastrianism)

b. Depraved/Sin as sickness (Christianity)

Most people spend around half their waking hours at work, so the question of what work means is an extremely important one. Everyone acknowledges that work is a necessity for survival, but beyond that, people disagree considerably about the meaning of work. Here are the various options (adapted from Dorothy Sayers):

1. Sacramental attitude toward work

a. Work for work�s sake; work is sacred (Christianity, Marxism)

2. Unsacramental attitude toward work

b. Industrious apprentice model (Calvinism)

c. Prostitution model/ Work as something done to make money

Here is further explanation and analysis of the basic options using the Criterion of Human Flourishing:

By sacramental, we mean the joint affirmation of matter and spirit described in problem #17, as it applies to work. According to the sacramental view, work is itself sacred, and not a part of the evil part of the material world desirable to escape. We live to work, not work to live (Sayers 73). As a consequence of this belief,

1) People can find meaning and fulfillment in their work. They will seek jobs that are suited to their interests and abilities, rather than on the basis of how to make the most money.

2) People can work toward productive ends. Competence and excellence will be called for.

3) Labor reform will aim at insuring both that workers have good working conditions and that they have meaningful and beneficial work to do� not, for example, manufacturing useless junk or producing immoral media products. Reform will aim at insuring �that the work shall be such that a man may do it with his whole heart, and that he should do it for the very work�s sake� (Sayers 53).

All these are essential parts of human flourishing, so the sacramental attitude is unfalsified and affirmed.

According to this view, if you work hard and are thrifty, God will bless you with contentment and skill. In fact, this is �enlightened self-interest in its vulgarest form, and plays directly into the hands of monopolists and the financier� (Sayers 51). The view has strong connection with Christianity, due to Calvinism and to a large extent the Church at large (as it followed the role allotted it by the capitalist economic system). Sayers observes, �Nothing has so deeply discredited the Christian Church as Her squalid submission to the economic theory of society [which subordinates humans and society to economic forces]� (Sayers 51). In Christian communities, this view is sometimes advanced on the grounds that there was no work in Eden before the Fall, which is simply not true (see Genesis 2:16). This view, history has shown, easily lends itself to supporting the manipulations and oppression of the owners of the means of production, who themselves operate on model c. Also, this model is disappointing, for many people work hard without always receiving the promised blessings. Thus, it is falsified b the Criterion of Human Flourishing.

Probably the dominant view today sees work exclusively as a means to making money, money which can be spent on other things, which are themselves desirable, while work is not. A surgeon described this view as follows:

This view leads to unhappiness and unfulfilledness. People are not happy when they are not engaged in meaningful work. If people�s work is merely a prostitution to make money for leisure activities, and their lives are not aimed at productivity of good products and contribution to society, their lives soon feel empty and meaningless. Why get up and go to work if work only provides money to relax from working and the work itself is useless? If people do not have a very concrete and significant project to work on they will quickly become bored and despair of a vacuous meaningless life. This is strong evidence that human nature finds fulfillment in fruitful work, as well as falsification of the prostitution model. finally, it suggests that Trade Unionism is misdirected. Unionists are typically concerned with working conditions and maximization of leisure to the exclusion of considerations of the nature of the work itself, i.e. whether it is vulgar and useless. Incompetence and a dislike for work early are tacitly affirmed as well. Consumerism has resulted from this way of thinking about work. Our economy is based on advertising that seeks to create false needs for people to buy things they don�t want just so money can be made. Fashion and planned convalescence of fads create a great deal of waste, as the consumer is made the victim of the money idolatry of the prostitution model.

The problem of spirit and matter has extremely important significant living implication. The problem of nature and grace is the question of how nature and the world of particulars relates to the universals, such as God, goodness, or absolutes. It also touches on epistemology, by distinguishing between natural knowledge and supernatural knowledge. Our attitude towards the material world and particulars with respect to the spiritual world and universals determines how we treat the human body and how we use art, the intellect, and material resources. There are just three basic answers to this problem:

a. Spirit is good and matter is evil; Grace is everything and nature is unimportant (Platonism, Gnosticism, Augustine, Asceticism, Pantheism)

b. Spirit is nonsense and matter is all; Grace is nonsense and nature is everything (Materialism)

c. Spirit and matter are both sanctified by God (Christianity)

Now, we will examine the three options in greater depth and analyze them with the Criterion of Human Flourishing:

According to Plato, the world of material reality is constantly in flux, and we cannot find our happiness here because our happiness requires a secure, unchanging object. Thus, embodiment is a painful, wearisome experience of pain and suffering for a human soul. The soul longs to escape the body and find happiness in the world of the perfect Forms/Ideas. This view was widespread in the ancient Mediterranean world, especially in the early Christian world where it took the form of mystery religions and Gnosticism, which can code mainly from the east. The Church was anti-Platonist from very early. In a world in which spirit was exalted and matter denigrated, Christianity stood up for the sacredness of matter through its doctrines of the Incarnation (that God took on flesh), its doctrine of bodily resurrection, and its sacraments (especially the Eucharist). A number of early heresies sought to advance Platonism. The New Testament contains a protest against the Platonist outlook on spirit and matter: �hypocritical liars . . . forbid people to marry and order them to abstain from certain foods, which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. For everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, because it is consecrated by the Word of God and prayer� (1 Timothy 4:1-4). Docetistm, an early heresy, denied that God was really embodied in Christ; he only appeared as a man, they claimed. Tertullian joined a puritanical sect called Montanism which was declared heretical. However, asceticism and Platonism came into mainstream Christianity with full force through Augustine. Augustine was a Neo-Platonist before becoming a Christian, and his theology remained thoroughly Platonist in its metaphysics. Augustine was displeased with all forms of bodily pleasure and favored harsh, ascetic treatment of the body. He resisted the use of music in church, he worried about eating more than would keep him alive and thus be a glutton, and he taught that couples should only have sex for procreative purposes, and never enjoy it, because if they enjoyed it, they would be sinning by seeking pleasure in another than God, who alone is unchanging and able to make us happy.

Critics of Christianity have long attacked it on the grounds of being anti-material. This criticism is so powerful because it is based on the implicit argument, �anti-materialism leads to a negation of many wonderful things in life; such a negation is not human flourishing; whatever does not lead to human flourishing cannot be true; therefore anti-materialism cannot be true.� Nietzsche is well known for his attack on Christianity as a negation of life, a negation of matter, a negation of the body, a negation of sexuality, a negation of all that was knowable real. He writes, for example, �People like Saint Paul have an evil eye for the passions: all they know of the passions is what is dirty, disfiguring, and heartbreaking; hence their idealistic tendency aims at the annihilation of the passions and they find perfect purity in the divine� (Nietzsche 139). Feuerbach criticized Christianity extensively on its purported anti-material basis. Feuerbach wrote that Christianity set man about obtaining his unattainable desires, and thereby ignored his attainable desires. It gave him imaginary desires, such as the desire for heaven and an afterlife, and thereby failed to give him what he really and truly desires, such as social reform and pleasure in this life. Christianity negates nature, the world, and mankind, which are seen as worthless before God, and leads to apathy about present social evils because it looks to justice in the afterlife. In contrast, atheism affirms life and the world, transforming idle, inactive faith into a duty, a matter of independent human activity toward justice. My task, wrote Feuerbach, is �to transform friends of God into friends of man, believers into thinkers, devotees of prayer into devotees of work, candidates for the hereafter into students of this world, Christians who, by their own profession and admission, are �half animal, half angel� into men, into whole men� (285).

Inasmuch as Christianity has emphasized an Augustinian spirit-matter dualism and the denigration of the material world, Nietzsche and Feuerbach are quite right. Legion are the people who have concluded that Christianity is false because of its Augustinian anti-sex teaching (i.e. sexual pleasure is part of human flourishing; Christianity precludes the enjoyment of sexual pleasure; whatever leads away from human flourishing cannot be true; therefore Christianity is false). However, this is Augustinian Platonist Christianity, not the Christianity of the New Testament and the early church. It is also characteristic of Calvinist Protestantism, whose theology is built on Augustine�s in many ways, and takes an ascetic view towards human pleasure, especially sexual (see the genuine problem of marriage and sex). Dorothy Sayers writes, �The common man labors under the delusion that for the Christian, matter is evil and the body is evil. For this misapprehension, St. Paul must bear some of the blame, Augustine of Hippo a good deal more, and Calvin a very great deal. But so long as the Church continues to teach the manhood of God and to celebrate the sacraments of the Eucharist and of marriage, no living man should dare to say that matter and body are not sacred to Her� (Sayers 50).

So, these characteristically otherworldly and anti-material doctrines, as expressed in Platonism, ancient Hellenistic mystery religions, and Augustinian/Calvinist Christianity, are falsified because they lead away from a proper appreciation and enjoyment of nature, of the body, of the senses, and of this life, and a lethargy about fighting the presence of evil in our societies, and an abuse of art, the intellect, and material resources.

This is the view of Feuerbach, Marx, Nietzsche, and all atheists. This view has its own problematic living implications. Feuerbach says humans should worship themselves rather than God; but why worship humans and not caterpillars if there is no reason to believe human consciousness is intrinsically no different from any other material entity? If there is no transcendent teleology in the world, there is no purpose to human life. If there are no moral absolutes, whether we act cruelly or kindly is of no consequence. If all we have is meaninglessness and death, life is very, very dark, certainly far from human flourishing. The atheist view is characterized by extreme reductionism and impoverishment. Refer to

problem #1 for the detailed falsification of atheism.

Seeing as the exclusionary views are false, it must be that an affirmation of spirit and matter is necessary for human flourishing. Dorothy Sayers writes about the Christian view,

(This is not an exclusively Christian position.) Sayers rightly observes that respect for people rather than exploiting them for commercial uses is an implication of the Christian view. The careful use and conservation of the environment instead of exploiting it for commercial uses is another important implication. The understanding of spirit and matter which alone will lead to human flourishing is the view which affirms matter as it is informed by spirit with meaning, purpose, morals, and personalism. An exclusively otherworldly perspective leads to the neglect of this life; the denial of any further life and of spiritual needs and goals makes this life meaningless; only the affirmation of both leads to flourishing.

a. Individual reform is impossible

(modern determinisms tell us we can�t change, but we can! They relieve us of responsibility, but deprive us of hope

b. Education

c. Reform unnecessary, for evil is illusory (Buddhism)

d. Reform unnecessary, for karma will take care of it (Hinduism)

e. Escape to good past

f. Escape from bad past

g. Accept yourself as you are (Self-esteemism)

h. Redeem the past�accept the whole past and give it new meaning

1. Christianity�supernatural transformation, forgiveness

2. Nietzscheanism�amor fati, past as necessary precondition for present self

i. Existentialism

j. Fatalism

k. Illusionism�self doesn�t exist; wrong approach altogether

l. Escapism/Fantasyism (Kracauer, Huxley, movies, alcohol, drugs, sex)

Six broad answers:

a. Major Goal: Address Individual

1. Some forms of Christian evangelicalism

2. Optimistic Individualist Reform

b. Major Goal: Address Culture/Institution

1. Marxism/Leninism (motives: envy)

2. Fascism??

3. Liberation Theology (Stage a revolution to overthrow the bourgeoisie)

4. Legalizationism (some religious forms)

5. Anarchism

c. Major Goal: Reform Individual and Culture

1. Christianity (cultural mandate and evangelistic mandate)

a. Arminians�actions and results undetermined (motive glorify God and love God and humans)

b. Calvinism�joint work with God in His Sovereign, Predetermined Will

c. Catholicism??

2. Secular Humanism/Enlightenment Classical Liberalism (education, legislation, and science)

d. Hands-Off

1. Social Darwinism�let the fit survive

3. Hinduism�Reform unnecessary, for karma will take care of everything

4. Religious Fatalism (�God will take care of it in His time�)

e. Not important

1. Individualism/Hedonism/Epicurianism�every man for himself

2. Reform, evil etc. is all illusion�samsara (Buddhism)

f. Oppose reform

1. Ultraconservativism (generally the upper class wanting to stay in power)

g. Pessimism: Reform desirable, but impossible

Broad Goals:

a. Utopianism (Marxism, Utopian Socialism, Classical Liberalism, Liberation theology)

b. Reformism (Christianity) God will actualize justice and utopia in another world; sanest and most true to facts

c. Pessimism???

d. Escapism (Buddhism)

e. Epicurianism

Implicit in the methods and goals for reform is the theory of human nature. <<<

Carl Jung: �It is becoming more and more obvious that it is not starvation, not microbes, not cancer, but man himself who is mankind�s greatest danger� (Guiness 17).

Bertrand Russell: �It is in our hearts that the evil lies, and it is from our hearts that it must be plucked out� (Guiness 17).

Timothy Leary: �Trust the evolutionary process. It�s all going to work out all right� (Guiness 53).

a. Dominion (Judaism, Christianity, Islam)

b. Earth as sister

c. Earth as Mother

a. Society is economic protection

b. Man is essentially social creature

c. Society is for flaunting self

d. Society is to do the work of reform (trust govt and legislation to reform)

e. Society/law is restraint/fence against evil, so that Divine activity of grace may do its redeeming work. Suspicion about union of state and religion (Christianity).

f. Society should be run by the Islamic Shiaria Law

g. One world-government ideal

a. Never judge another person as believing or acting wrongly (Postmodern Relativism)

b. You are an adequate judge of other people�s wrong beliefs and actions

c. God�s revelation discloses the unilateral right action and belief leading to human flourishing, which must be proclaimed; One should not condemn (i.e. sentence) other people for their actions or beliefs, since all are similarly guilty

�Tolerance of everything is the sign of an empty head, not a mark of agape love� (Carnell, 85). Dorothy Sayers writes that �The Church names the sixth deadly sin Acedia or Sloth. In the world it calls itself Tolerance; but in Hell it is called Despair. . . . It is the sin which believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, loves nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing, and only remains alive because there is nothing it would die for. We have known it far too well for many years. The only thing perhaps that we have not known about it is that it is mortal sin� (Sayers 108).

While the problem of full-scale war may not be a forced option for every person in the world, it is still an essential question as far as human flourishing is concerned. So far as I know, not a generation has passed in which war has not forced people to consider this problem. However, the problem of war is really only a larger version of the Problem of Conflict, just as an army at best is only an international version of a police force. Everyone must consider the problems of crime and conflict, and I think we can treat these problems together with war because they are all very closely related.

a. Peace at any price/ Ignore conflict

b. Willing, nonretalatory suffering in cause of righteousness

c. Offensive war good (e.g. to gain territory for one�s own superior group, to crush one�s enemies (Nazism, Huseinism, Crusades)

d. Just War Theory (defensive war, war better than bad peace)

One of my history teachers used to refer to British Prime Minister Nevile Chamberlain as the �Wimp of the Twentieth Century.� Chamberlain acquiesced to Hitler again and again in order to bring �Peace in Our Times.� What his blind optimism really brought was �The Biggest War in the History of the World in Our Times.� We won�t fault Chamberlain for his optimism, but as far as realism goes, the man had his head in the clouds. (I am not claiming that WWII can be blamed entirely on Chamberlain, nor that the blindly optimistic British people who applauded him were any less guilty than him.) Problems usually escalate�international problems, particularly. We all know this on a more everyday level, too. Often, like Chamberlain, we believe the world is how we want it to be. Wishful thinking leaves us in confusion between what is real and what is fantasy. Problems with other people which we do not address do not go away; they get bigger. I suspect everyone has often awoken to a problem in their life that has been building for some time and realized that if he or she had only identified and addressed it at the beginning, it would not be so hard to solve now.

In contrast to Chamberlain, Winston Churchill�s promise of �blood, toil, seat, and tears� seems much truer to reality. Here we come back to the problem of Judgment. If we are not to judge at all, then we have no right to accuse someone else of doing wrong, much less to fight them about it. But if there are truths which cannot be compromised, whose compromising will entail such consequences as the spread of Fascist culture and ethics across the civilized world, then war is not only necessary, but essential. According to this view, there are fights worth fighting.

As I survey the results of these two ways of thinking, I see the Chamberlain-Churchill pattern written all across history, my own life, and the lives of others I know. Peace at any price leads to an unlivable peace in which human flourishing is thoroughly compromised.

a. Limited, Essentialist Freedom = freedom to be within medium/form (e.g. art, sports)

1. Essential = human nature as specified in 10 Commandments (Judaism, Christianity)

2. Essential = socio-pyscho-cultural determinisms (Camus?)

b. Absolute Freedom = freedom from any external determination (Nietzsche, Sartre, Berdyaev)

c. Determinism (freedom is illusory)

DS, MOM, 65-66: �For the true freedom of the Energy consists in its willing submission to the limitations of its own medium. The attempt to achieve freedom from the medium ends invariably in loss of freedom within the medium, since, here as everywhere, activity falls under the judgment of its own nature.�

a. Because we bring our backgrounds to every word and sentence we ever speak, we cannot communicate at all

b. As soon as we use any term in symbolic language system, everyone has an absolute, exhaustive, and common meaning of the term since we�re using the same words

c. terium quid: Sufficient �overlapping on the basis of the external world and the human experience to ensure that we can communicate even though we fall short of an exhaustive meaning of the same word� (73)

--Scientific knowledge is true, though not exhaustive, knowledge

--Relational knowledge is true, though not exhaustive, knowledge. The Christian knows who a person really is internally; knows himself as he really is.

a. Sociology of Knowledge -self refuting//Freud, Marx--unflourishing because vie from nowhere

b. Innate/Natural

a) Internal effable experience

b) Internal ineffable experience

c) External effable experience

(from Carnell)

a) Sinner (Augustine)

b) Sinless (Behaviorist)

c) Godlike (Satre, Nietzsche, Shaw, Raynd)

d) Dust (Calvinism)

e) False humility

f) Saint and Sinner; Personal yet limited (Christianity)

False humility, self-flagellation, no self-confidence�>destroys authentic relations, love, learning, productivity. Doesn�t resolve problems. Encourages incompetence, weaknesses, acceptance of poor performance, low standards.

No humility; offensive pride. Dishonesty about sin. Dishonesty about contingencies of human existence. Sartre�s talk of absolute freedom is unintelligible. Beavoir corrects it some in The Ethics of Ambiguity.

Encourages apathy, fatalism.

Pascal

DB Essays toNo

There are four parts to the Christian self-conception:

1) Saint.

2) Sinner. Human strength is in fact weakness because it attempts to promote and defend oneself (Snodgras xx). Weakness is strength because it removes the misdirected focus on oneself present in human �strength.� Milton, in Paradise Lost, described sin as an unwillingness to accept existence on the terms given. For Lucifer, this was as #3 in the hierarchy of Father, Christ, Lucifer. For Adam, this was as a human being, created somewhere between the beasts and the angels. Klyne Snodgras writes,

3) Personal. To be personal is to be made in God�s image and to be a person for whom Christ has died. Both creation and redemption instill tremendous objective value and significance in every single person. To be personal is also to have a mind and will, to rationally interpret the universe and to be capable and responsible for taking action in the world in accordance with either good or evil, dependent only upon your own free choice.

4) Limited. This means that humans should be humble about their status in the universe. They have no strength, no abilities, no meaning, no purpose, not even existence without God. Every good thing is a gift from God. Everything we have we possess only as stewards, not as owners.

Since we are integrated beings, we must choose a belief system for ourselves which best answers all the problems, or at least the problems which seem most besetting at this time of our lives. It happens, as we have seen, that one belief system�and only one�consistently gives the only non-falsifiable answers to every major problem on which we must act, answers for every genuine option which lead to human flourishing every time. This belief system is Christianity. The comprehensiveness of its sole success on the genuine option is even further testimony to its truth. We have spent almost no time on the evidences of Christianity, which are impressive and offer yet additional confirmation of its truth. We have omitted evidences because we consider the evidences experientially secondary, i.e. the atheist will try to solve genuine options according to his own system and struggle with the unlivabitities of his own system long before he will start looking at the evidences for Christianity. One of the advantages of the method here employed is that it starts with common ground, the actualities and the problems we must all face, so it is immediately relevant to every person, not just those concerned with investigating the potential truth of Christianity for whatever particular reason.

I am convinced that one can only reject Christianity after following this argument by refusing to believe it because one does not want it to be true or by being dishonest about the living inconsistencies one�s non-Christian presuppositions force one to make. Even if the reader denies the logical necessity of my conclusions based on the Unlivability Falsification Theorem, he still must face the very considerable claim that the results of assuming the Christian position are far less absurd on all the genuine options, and lead to far greater human flourishing, than the results of any other position. This alone, even without necessity, is a strong argument for the skeptic to face carefully.

In closing, consider this statement, �instead of beginning with facts and later discovering God [empiricism], unless a thinker begins with God, he can never end with God, or get the facts either� (Clark, A Christian Philosophy of Education, 38). We identified the facts, i.e. the actualities, and then postulated God as the precondition of possibility for these actualities, observing that God not only explains the facts, but offer a simple, coherent system, while the denial of God yields an complex theory of ad hoc hypotheses which are contradictory with any atheistic system. We don�t begin with God, but we do find God midway as a well-justified hypothesis, and demonstrate that to leave out God ultimately required one to deny those actualities whose denial we cannot live out.

What I have here introduced under the name of �Transcendental Pragmatism� is nothing less than a new school of philosophy. �Transcendental� refers to the Kantian method and structure of argument in Part A of this paper (though it stakes no claim in Kant�s metaphysics of the phenomenal and noumenal world). �Pragmatism� refers to the general assumption which seems ubiquitous, even among philosophers who deny it at work, but depend on it in the rest of their lives: the assumption behind the Unlivability Falsification Theorem and the Criterion of Human Flourishing. This assumption is that there is an authoritative need to believe certain things based on the necessities of human life and that objective empirical truth is too reductionist an approach. The movement of the argument through falsification and elimination and the theory of true truth distinguishes Transcendental Pragmatism from classical Pragmatism. By way of this method, too, the sincere searcher after truth acquires confidence that his beliefs are true; for having exhausted all other possibilities, he knows that no one alive or in the history of recorded belief systems has a better system than he does. This confidence and exhaustive method is important as a fallback for the inevitable times of doubting which are part of the existential human experience.

Here is also a new school of Christian apologetics. While I derived this apologetic from numerous apologists and theologians, to whom I am greatly indebted, I found that this apologetic was latent or implicit in their work, sometimes even explicit, but never systematized. The main formative writers for my thinking in this matter are Francis Schaeffer, Dorothy Sayers, E.J. Carnell, G.K. Chesterton, William James, and Blaise Pascal. The two traditional schools of Christian apologetics are Evidentialism and Presuppositionalism. The spearhead of modern Evidentialism was B.B. Warfield, while the spearhead of modern Presuppositionalism was Cornelius van Til. Evidentialism (or Classical apologetics) is by far the oldest form of apologetics. Thomism as an epistemology is a type of Evidentialism. Presuppositionalism arose in response to the modernist, naturalistic worldview. Presuppositionalists realized that all the evidences of Christianity in the world wouldn�t convince an atheist whose presuppositions denied that Christianity could even possibly be true. Evidentialism was effective as long as the surrounding society had similar views of truth and the supernatural. So, the Presuppositionalists base their epistemology on the testing of theories by assuming their presuppositions (e.g. for Christianity, the assumption that God exists and has revealed himself in the Bible) and comparing the resulting systems by their self-consistency and ability to fit the facts of history, science, and internal evidence (e.g. mind, ideas, etc.).

As should be clear, Evidentialism is an apologetic derivative of empiricism and Presuppositionalism is an apologetic derivative of rationalism. The strength of Evidentialism is that it stays close to this world and the concrete facts. Its weakness is that without common ground to appeal to, no non-Christian (especially none with materialist presuppositions) would ever have much interest in looking at the evidence. The strength of Presuppositionalism is that it recognizes the failure of strict Evidentialism to persuade someone who views the world radically different a priori. The weakness is that many non-Christians will not be interested in assuming something that seems absurd to them in order to see if that assumption produces a better system than their own. In other words, Presuppositionalism assumes there is no common ground. However, in its criteria of testing systems according to the facts, it reveals that there is common ground and that here is the place we should start. In both of these approaches, apologetics assumes a defensive posture, to claim Christianity is not intellectually stupid or untenable. But since there is common ground, and Christians do believe Christianity is true truth, I contest that the posture of apologetics must de offensive as well as defensive, to claim that Christianity is the intellectually superior system. So, I put forth Transcendental Pragmatism as a new way of doing apologetics which combines the strengths of both older approaches without taking on their weaknesses. Transcendental Pragmatism has the advantage of appealing to real-life common ground realities to reveal the need to change presuppositions and then looking into real-life problems which everyone faces to show the consistent strength of Christian answers and the consistent weakness of non-Christian answers. To start with these common ground actualities insupportable by non-Christian systems is what Schaeffer calls, �Finding the Point of Tension.� Schaeffer explains,

Just as this whole paper has defended the claim that all proper and meaningful theory has its concrete application, so too, does this apologetic system. As Schaeffer recommends, the Christian seeking to share his faith with the non-Christian should not work through this entire system with him or her, but rather should use this system to illuminate the specific point of tension for the unique individual and to investigate the possible solutions to the specific existential problems he or she is facing. For the Christian whose faith has been shaken, this system as a whole may provide an invaluable epistemological foundation for rational faith, just as it has for me.

Quite simply, Transcendental Pragmatism is a systematic expression of the way almost everyone thinks, experiences tensions with inadequate beliefs, and makes decisions to change beliefs. The common canon of truth, I believe, is �this system works fruitfully according to actualities I cannot deny, while no other system I now know of does.� Usually this canon is applied unconsciously, as in the case of most Christians.

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